


The Wrong Side Of Heaven (And The Righteous Side Of Hell)

by commoncomitatus



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/F, Identity Issues, Mirror Universe, Self-Harm, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 18:13:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 38
Words: 368,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1276077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Equilibrium", set shortly after "Second Skin".  With a sadistic sociopath reawakening inside her head, Jadzia Dax is an identity crisis waiting to happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Let me get this straight…”

Kira Nerys sighed, dropping her head into her hands and massaging the ridges across her nose. Around them, the Replimat was bustling, Starfleet officers coming and going with clockwork efficiency, timing their lunch-breaks down to the minute while Bajoran crew members and visitors from across the quadrant relaxed over any number of food-and-beverage combinations. As usual, they were far too caught up in their own exciting lives to pay attention to the station’s first officer, but that didn’t stop Kira looking like she wanted the ground to open up and suck her out into space.

“Dax…”

Like almost everything that came out of the major’s mouth, it was a warning. Dax, of course, completely ignored it, flashing her most winning smile as she carried right on antagonising her.

“Let me get this straight,” she said again. “You want me to go on vacation…”

“Pilgrimage,” Kira corrected, sounding thoroughly disgusted, like she thought the word ‘vacation’ was the most insulting thing imaginable. “I said ‘pilgrimage’. It’s a spiritual retreat, Dax, not some kind of self-indulgent—”

Dax silenced her with an exaggerated groan, holding up her hands in surrender. She should have seen those protestations coming, she supposed grimly, and rushed to placate her already-affronted companion. “All right, all right…” Kira’s glare softened to a scowl, and Dax pressed on with a sigh of relief. “You want me to go on a ‘pilgrimage’…”

Kira rolled her eyes as Dax mimed quote-marks around the offending word. “Less of the attitude,” she huffed. “But yes. I want you to go on a pilgrimage.”

“…in one of the most remote and secluded parts of Bajor…”

“That’s right.”

“…renowned for its beauty and spirituality…”

“Yes.”

“…with you.”

“Is that really such an offensive concept?”

“Not at all.” By now, Dax’s grin was almost wide enough to hurt her cheeks. “In fact, it sounds lovely. But honestly, Nerys…”

Kira bristled. “Dax.”

“…do you really expect me to believe that this isn’t a proposition?”

And just like that, the scowl became a glare once again. Dax supposed she couldn’t blame her for it this time; by her own admission, she took far too much pleasure in antagonising the poor major. Still, though, for all her stoic Bajoran gruffness Dax couldn’t help noting the little twitch at the corners of Kira’s lips, like she was trying a little too hard to stifle a smile. _Score one for Trill charisma,_ she thought with another dazzling grin.

“Keep this up,” Kira warned moodily, “and I’ll take back the invitation completely.”

Dax just smirked all the more. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Major,” she deadpanned. “I take your invitations very seriously.” She clutched at her bosom. “To heart, even.”

Kira swatted her for that. “You’re incorrigible. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Neither do I,” Dax admitted. “It must be my ravishing good looks.”

Still, though, she sobered a little. Kira had an odd look on her face now, and it made her frown. There was the expected eagerness and sincerity, of course, genuine enthusiasm about this ‘pilgrimage’ of hers and the idea of Dax joining her on it, but it was all mixed up with something else, something that wasn’t nearly as light as their banter. It was a kind of unease, a sense of what looked like nervousness, though Dax knew that was ridiculous; Kira wouldn’t know nervousness if it pointed a phaser at her. But there it was, that almost-familiar uneasiness, like she was afraid she’d crossed a line by daring to even ask.

The thought was so preposterous that Dax shook her head; they’d known each other for more than two years, and Kira really should have figured out by now that there was no ‘line’ where Dax was concerned, that it was practically impossible to offend her, even if she tried. Still, though, for all that she wanted to convince herself that she was seeing things — she hadn’t got much sleep last night, and hadn’t had nearly enough raktajino to sustain her through another long day; she was over-tired and imagining things that weren’t there — the lines on Kira’s face were unmistakable, and Dax had seen enough unease on enough faces to recognise it from a dozen light-years away.

It saddened her a little. Easiness and comfort came so easily to Dax; she had no boundaries, no barriers, and after seven lifetimes she didn’t really know the meaning of ‘personal space’ any more; inviting a friend along on vacation — or a ‘pilgrimage’, or whatever Kira felt she had to call it to justify the idea of enjoying herself a little — would have come to her as naturally as breathing. If she’d been in Kira’s place, she probably would have bundled her onto the nearest runabout without so much as a second thought.

But it wasn’t like that with Kira. Dax knew that, and she knew too that it sometimes made it difficult for her to do things that Dax wouldn’t even have to think about.

Things like this, apparently. There was a part of Dax that realised she probably wasn’t making it any easier for her, what with her quick mouth and quicker wit, making light of things that Kira obviously took very seriously. From the look on her face, she’d even go so far as to wonder if she was actually making it a whole lot harder for her… but at the same time, because she was who she was, she also couldn’t bring herself to stop.

It was all she knew, really, that inappropriate sense of humour and the lack of a brain-to-mouth filter. It was a legacy from the previous Dax hosts, Curzon and Torias (and occasionally Emony, when she caught the right mood), who never seemed to think before they said anything, and offended at least as many people as they befriended in any given moment. It had been a part of Dax far longer than it had ever been a part of Jadzia, the shy young initiate who had barely been able to string a sentence together before the symbiont got into her, but over the last three years it had become at least as much a part of her as the host Jadzia’s own memories.

Honestly, most of the time, it was about the only thing she could think of to make things easier, to lighten the moment and relax the person sitting opposite her. It worked with almost everyone she’d come to know on Deep Space Nine, and if it had been anyone other than Kira sitting across from her right now, she knew it would have worked perfectly well. But Kira Nerys was different; she was brittle and somber, and her smiles were too precious to waste on Dax and her frivolity. She’d spent too much of her life learning the price of being free, and even though they’d known each other for more than two years now, it still sometimes struck Dax with the force of a physical blow to be reminded of that.

Her quick mouth had no place at a table with Major Kira, and she knew that, but still it was sometimes more than she could do to close it. She couldn’t stop being herself, the quick-witted Dax nestled inside self-conscious young Jadzia, any more than Kira could simply cast off the shackles of the Cardassian occupation that had destroyed her home and so much of her life.

So, really, she supposed it wasn’t Kira’s nervousness that surprised her at all; she was one of the bravest souls Dax had ever met, and certainly the bravest Jadzia had, but when it came to simple things like eating lunch with a friend or making vacation plans, she was very much out of her comfort zone. Honestly, she would have been more worried if Kira didn’t look ill at ease in a social situation like this, though that didn’t make it any less heartbreaking to see.

Honestly, it was the offer itself that confused her more than anything else. As touching and truly thoughtful as the gesture was, and as deeply as Dax appreciated that Kira would willingly choose to spend time with her away from the station — and on Bajor, of all places; Dax knew perfectly well how sacred Kira’s home was to her — it wasn’t very much like her at all. Kira was a very private soul, and a deeply spiritual one, and she liked to keep to herself where possible. Oh, she had friends, and Dax flattered herself that she numbered among them, but there was a pretty sizeable difference between getting together for dinner a couple of times a week and… well, spontaneous pilgrimages in romantic settings on Bajor.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she urged, forcing her tone to steady itself into something more somber, something more like Kira. “It’s a lovely gesture. I’m deeply flattered that you’d think of me. It’s just… well, it’s just so out of the blue.”

“You think so?” Kira asked.

The question was sincere, and Kira’s face was as open as Dax had ever seen it. She felt a little trapped, like Kira had expected her to react a certain way and she was playing it all wrong, and she floundered for a way to apologise without actually asking what she’d done to screw things up.

Talking with Kira, even about things that didn’t really matter, often felt like defusing a bomb; make one wrong move or throw out a quip at the wrong moment, and they would both go up in flames. Dax was very aware of the thin tightrope she was walking, the danger of saying or doing the wrong thing and watching helplessly as the last two years’ worth of progress and slow-growing friendship imploded completely, leaving behind nothing but a crater and a vague idea of what might have been. She knew all of that, had known it right from the start, before this semi-blossoming friendship had been more than an idea in her own head, and long before it had finally manifested in Kira’s; it had become almost like second nature to step carefully through the minefield, to watch her tongue just a little more carefully with Kira than she would with anyone else, at least as much as she was able to at all (which, if right now was anything to go by, wasn’t very). She was long accustomed to this sort of thing, but at the moment it kind of felt like the rules of the game had changed and Kira had forgotten to tell her.

“Well, yes,” she admitted, though she felt far worse for saying it now than she had just a few short moments earlier. “It’s not like you to want to share your spiritual time with anyone. Least of all…”

She didn’t say _‘someone like me’_ , but the look on Kira’s face said she heard it just the same; the moment hung over the table between them, a little too heavy and a little too cumbersome, so Dax quickly switched to a less precarious tack, bringing a twinkle to her eyes and forcing another cocky grin.

“And anyway, isn’t there a certain vedek you should be inviting instead?”

Kira’s features relaxed a little at the change of subject, and Dax breathed another sigh of relief. Another mine neatly sidestepped, she thought.

“I could ask Bareil,” Kira said with a shrug. “And if you don’t want to come, I will. But…” She faltered, as though stepping close to a precipice she hadn’t wanted, or expected, to get quite so close to. “That’s not the point, is it? I asked you, not him.”

Dax opened her mouth to ask why, but thought better of it, and closed it again. Kira caught it just the same, though, and her expression darkened. Dax recognised her trademark self-protection, hyper-defensiveness masked by justified annoyance, and she knew that she was in trouble.

“If you don’t want to come,” Kira added, sounding hurt, “just say so.”

“I didn’t say that,” Dax insisted quickly. She floundered a bit, thrown by her own eagerness to please, and the subtle shift in Kira’s expression. “That isn’t… I mean… look, that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t appreciate it, or that I don’t want to come—” She hadn’t implied she did, either, but she hoped that Kira wouldn’t pick up on that. “—or anything of the sort. It’s just…”

She studied Kira again, watching the lines of her mouth, thin and tight where she would normally be at least attempting a smile; an unpleasant feeling settled in her stomach, and she felt the symbiont shift. This was about something more than a vacation, she realised, or even a ‘pilgrimage’. Kira wasn’t inviting her along just for the joy of her company, that much was blatantly obvious, and it made her very uncomfortable.

“Kira,” she managed, giving voice to her anxiety before it had a chance to paralyse her. “Is there something I need to know?”

“Like what?” Kira demanded hotly, then forced herself to soften, perhaps seeing the worry in Dax’s eyes. “I mean, of course not. Why would you…”

But there, she faltered, unable to complete the question; though she didn’t say anything more, Dax could feel the stumble as though she’d tried to but failed, like the embarrassing echo of a verbal mis-step, a moment of clumsiness that silenced her before she had the chance to conjure up any more excuses or hide behind stupid questions they both knew the answer to.

Dax studied her, trying not to sound as panicked as she suddenly felt. “Kira.”

“Fine.” Kira rolled her eyes, crumbling entirely too easily. Dax was sure she had never seen her give in to anything without a fight, and that made just her even more worried. “If you must know,” she sighed, “I thought it might do both of us some good to get away from the station for a while.”

Dax frowned. It didn’t surprise her, of course, that Kira herself would feel the need for a change of scenery; her kidnapping by the Cardassians was no secret to anyone, and it didn’t take someone as close to her as Dax was to know that the experience had left her more than a little shaken. It had been only a few days since they’d brought her back to the station, safe and sound and mostly intact, but she hadn’t really been herself since. Dax understood the feeling, though she wished she didn’t. Since she’d come back, Kira seemed to flit between a shortness of temper that was extreme even by her standards and fleeting flashes of melancholy so profound that they struck Dax down to her soul; it was heartbreaking to see, and more heartbreaking to share.

Commander Sisko had insisted that she take some time off off to recuperate, to wrap her head around what had happened to her, and for once she’d taken the order without argument. The alone was a sure sign that all was not right with her, and Dax found that she wasn’t really surprised at all to find out now that she was making good use of that free time, using the enforced rest period to go on this ‘pilgrimage’, to commune with her home and her faith, to ‘find herself’ as spiritual people sometimes did. In Dax’s not-so-expert opinion it was the best place for her, and it made her smile to learn that Kira felt that way too.

But what could have possibly possessed her to think that Dax needed, or wanted, the same treatment? She was hardly a spiritual soul herself, and she knew better than to think that Kira expected her to find faith or the Prophets in the idyllic corners of remotest Bajor. Oh, she would appreciate the scenery, she had no doubt of that… but the kind of devotional epiphany that she suspected Kira had in mind for herself? Off the top of her head, she could think of approximately a million ways she’d rather spend her precious vacation time. No, Kira couldn’t possibly expect Dax to indulge in the same spiritual ideology that she herself did; clearly, she had something deeper in mind, and Dax twitched as she wondered what.

It bothered her more than she wanted to admit to think that Kira might see a different kind of kindred spirit in her now, something a little less theological and a little more broken, and she felt her own shoulders start to stiffen with the same kind of hyper-defensive stubbornness that she’d seen in Kira just a few moments earlier.

“Why would you think that?” she demanded, sounding rather more belligerent than she’d intended. “I’m quite content here.”

Kira’s features had turned unnaturally soft. Suddenly, hers was the face of a friend offering an intervention; it was vastly different from the friend who so often needed one, the friend that Dax was comfortable with, and she felt a chill run up her spine to look at it. Kira’s expression now was one of knowing — or, far worse, of understanding — and it was deeply disconcerting. Her eyes were bright, almost fierce, like she was looking right through Dax’s and into her soul, like she could see everything she’d hidden away inside there, seven (no, she remembered with a shiver, _eight_ ) lifetimes’ worth of memories, as though she was stripping her naked and seeing things that even Dax herself didn’t know were there.

“Jadzia…”

The name sounded strange on Kira’s lips; she was so used to hearing ‘Dax’, or ‘Lieutenant’, carefully-chosen formalities, but very rarely ‘Jadzia’, very rarely the shy little girl who still felt like an initiate most of the time. They had talked, occasionally, about the importance of names to joined Trill, the difference she felt in hearing ‘Jadzia’ or ‘Dax’; theirs was a single shared existence, but identity was a far trickier concept to define or describe. It was one of the things she’d struggled with the most since being joined, and she knew that Kira didn’t fully understand the distinction.

With Benjamin, of course, she was always Dax. She had to be; if she wasn’t, if she let herself remember for even a second that she wasn’t Curzon any more, she would remember that she was just a shy and self-conscious young woman who had no place on this station. Benjamin, of course, understood that to a point, but she rather suspected he found it more comfortable to think of her as simply ‘Dax’ anyway; he liked having that link to Curzon just as much as she did, albeit for his own reasons. Theirs was a straightforward relationship, every bit as symbiotic as that between symbiont and host, and she was grateful for it.

Kira didn’t understand the subtleties like Benjamin did, though. Dax tried to explain it, how some mornings she would wake up as Dax and others as Jadzia, how the two names were exclusive even as they were both hers. It was a difficult thing to explain to anyone, and Kira didn’t have nearly enough patience for it. Maybe one day, when their slow-blooming friendship was stronger, she would find the patience, but right now they were both too busy to deal with it.

Still, there was a pointed deliberateness to the way she said it now. _Jadzia_ , like an accusation and an offering at the same time, like she was demanding that the symbiont take a step back and give the host room to breathe and also entreating that shy and self-conscious little girl to step up and be her friend. She wasn’t talking to the three-hundred-year-old worm right now, Dax realised; on the most fundamental and significant level, she really was talking to Jadzia. The thought intimidated her; even now, after nearly three years, she was still embarrassed by the little girl she had once been.

“Jadzia,” Kira said again, just as pointed as before, and Dax flinched. “Do you really think nobody’s noticed how many hours you’ve clocked in the holosuite over the last couple of weeks?”

That struck a nerve, and Dax didn’t even have the foresight to keep from turning her face away in the vain hope that Kira wouldn’t see the sudden flush of shame colouring her features. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do,” Kira replied, pointed but not forceful. “I’m not the only one who’s been through an ordeal, am I?”

Dax swallowed hard, and closed her eyes. She knew exactly what Kira was talking about, of course. How could she not, when it still haunted her every breath?

She hated that she was so transparent, that even Kira could see the cracks in her perfectly polished armour, that even she could read between the lines of a few hours in the holosuite and realise what they really meant. Was it really that obvious? Had she really spent that much time in the holosuite, that even Kira, who hated the damn things with every fibre of her being (and who frankly had enough troubles of her own to worry about), had noticed and filed the information away to call her out on later?

She was angry, she realised. Angry at Kira for noticing, and angry at herself for being so careless. Angry because she was so dependent on something so stupid, angry because she didn’t know what else to do. Angry because Kira thought she could fix this with a religious retreat on a planet that meant nothing to her. Angry—

—but then, that was the problem, wasn’t it? She was angry. She was so _angry_.

Why else would she lock herself away in the holosuite for hours on end? Jadzia Dax was probably the biggest social butterfly on the whole of Deep Space Nine; she had friends of every species, every rank and class, and she never wanted for companionship. She liked it that way; over the course of all her lifetimes, she had found few things more fulfilling than a pleasant conversation, and the more people she knew the more corners of her own identity she got to indulge. Chief O’Brien got along swimmingly with Tobin’s engineering genius, while Quark and his Ferengi friends got a kick out of Curzon’s appreciation for tongo.

But lately, all of her time went into the holosuites, alone. She didn’t trust herself not to lose her temper, not to upend a tongo wheel if it didn’t spin the way she wanted, not to throw her drink in O’Brien’s face if he disagreed with her about propulsion systems. She didn’t trust herself not to lose herself to the anger that had been swelling and bubbling inside her, ever since…

…ever since her so-called ‘ordeal’.

Joran Belar. A musical genius with psychopathic tendencies who had lived and died about a hundred years ago. He’d had a violent temper, and that temper had driven him to do terrible things, including killing innocent people. He was the last person who should ever have been approved for joining with a symbiont, and yet he had been. Somehow, some way, he had convinced the Symbiosis Commission that he was a suitable host for Dax after Torias’s unfortunate shuttle accident. Somehow. Some way.

A century’s worth of memory blocks had kept his memories suppressed, but even they couldn’t last forever, and now Joran’s sordid and violent memories were settling in Jadzia’s head, right beside the gentle Audrid and the stoic Lela, the headstrong Emony and the quiet Tobin, the sybaritic Torias and the exuberant Curzon. He was inside her, just like every other host the symbiont had ever had, and that meant that she, shy little Jadzia, had to deal with that violent temper of his.

But, of course, she couldn’t. She was just a little girl with a headful of memories; she was strong enough to know that the anger and the hatred weren’t her own, that the urge to hurt people didn’t come from inside herself, but it was more than she could do most of the time to hold it at bay. And so, because she was scared and embarrassed, because she hated herself for being so weak far more than she hated Joran for being so strong, she hid in the holosuite. Like a child hiding from the monsters under her bed, Jadzia Dax cowered in the holosuite, hiding in that haven of imagination, a place where nobody was real and nobody could die when she lost control.

“Jadzia.”

She blinked, fighting off the thoughts and the tears that sparked with them. She couldn’t let Kira see that she was right, couldn’t let her see how tenuous her control was; how would she ever trust her again if she did? So, as usual, she did the only thing she could think of, playing the favourite trick of all the Dax hosts: she changed the subject.

“Did Benjamin put you up to this?”

Kira seemed genuinely wounded by that. “Of course not,” she said, visibly upset that Dax would think Benjamin was the only one who could see deeper than the spots rippling down the sides of her face. “Sisko isn’t the only one who knows you, you know.”

“I know,” Dax said, curbing her emotions as best she could and mustering an apology from some out-of-reach place inside her (courtesy of Tobin, no doubt; he was about the only Dax who had ever been capable of apologising, and he did it to excess). “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… well, this is exactly the sort of thing he would do.”

Kira sighed, looking as though she deeply regretted ever thinking that this was a good idea, like she wanted nothing more than to take back the whole conversation and pretend it never happened. “Look, Jadzia. I…”

Dax closed her eyes as she trailed off. She didn’t want to hear it, and she didn’t want to give Kira an opening to say what they both knew she meant, no doubt what half the station knew: that Dax, as usual, wasn’t nearly as much of a paragon as she wanted everyone to believe. It was bad enough in the holosuite, bad enough when she was alone with all the things she couldn’t control, Joran’s temper and his violent urges, but she couldn’t face it here too.

If Kira kept pushing this, if she kept pushing Dax, she would lose control. She could feel it, anger crackling like lightning in her veins and the fear of it bubbling in her stomach, acid seething and unbearable. She couldn’t let Kira push her. She couldn’t lose her temper, couldn’t lose control. Not here, not with so many people around. Not in front of Kira.

So, again, she changed the subject, blurting out the first thing that came to mind, turning the spotlight of scrutiny around and flashing it back in Kira’s face. “How are you holding up?”

Kira recoiled at the question, both for its suddenness and its intrusiveness. She recovered herself, then frowned, eyes narrowing into a scowl that didn’t seem to know whether to be offended or touched, and Dax felt her pulse quickening. Kira was puzzled, she could tell, by her unexpected resistance to being the centre of attention, a behaviour so unlike herself. Dax wasn’t usually the kind to shy away from questioning, even interrogation, and especially not from a friend that she trusted; perhaps Kira wasn’t Benjamin Sisko, but she was probably the next best thing, at least on Deep Space Nine, and the belligerence in her voice must have startled her.

Dax was startled too, but for different reasons. She could feel the aggression, so close to anger, itching like spider-bites under the surface of her skin. The sensation was familiar, in a way that it hadn’t been a few weeks earlier, before Joran, before a quick temper or a flight of impatience became something frightening and dangerous.

Kira watched as she squirmed in her seat, looking guarded and uncomfortable all over again. She seemed to think better of confronting the issue just then, though, and opted for the slightly safer option of just answering the question she’d been asked. Dax was grateful, and she suspected it showed in the slump of her shoulders as Kira leaned back and considered.

“I’m fine,” she said after a moment, though she must have known she wasn’t fooling either of them. “It’s been a few days. I’ve been through much worse, and had far less time to recover, so…”

She was talking about her time the Bajoran resistance, Dax knew, during the Cardassian occupation. She nodded with respect, but wouldn’t let Kira hide behind her past. “I’m sure you have,” she said evenly. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not still allowed to be a little shaken.”

“I know that,” Kira said, matching the coolness of her tone perfectly.

Dax forced a sympathetic smile, but it didn’t come as easily or naturally as it should have, and she could tell that Kira saw the slight tremor at the corners of her lips.

“It’s just…” she went on, babbling now, desperate to keep the focus on Kira where it belonged, where it was easy. “Well, you know… it’s a lot for someone to go through. For anyone to go through, I mean. Even someone as weathered as you are.” Kira chuckled at the back-handed compliment, more amused than offended, and Dax rushed quickly on. “Besides, I think we both know you wouldn’t be going on this ‘pilgrimage’ if you really were fine.”

For a long moment, Kira didn’t say anything. She just kept staring at her, studious and thoughtful, as though she believed she could bend Dax into changing the subject again if she stayed silent for long enough. Maybe she’d picked that up from Quark; Dax had lost more than her share of tongo matches against the sneaky Ferengi because of dirty little tricks like that, and there was no doubt in her mind that she’d end up opting to ‘retreat’ here as well if Kira kept looking at her like that. Daxes had a history of being cool under scrutiny, one of the earliest gifts given to the symbiont courtesy of Lela the legislator, but Jadzia wasn’t comfortable enough in her own skin yet to have really absorbed that particular trait. She still blushed and stammered like a first-year Starfleet cadet under pressure. Quark was all too aware of that particular flaw in her, and it seemed that Kira was catching on to it now as well, much to her annoyance.

She was just about to cave in and run away, when Kira surprised them both, seeming to think twice about calling her bluff, and folding her own hand instead.

“All right,” she said, sounding weary; Dax suspected she was giving up as much to get the confession off her chest as to show pity to the crumbling Trill. “Maybe I’m not fine. Maybe I am still struggling with what happened on Cardassia. Maybe. But if I am…” She shot Dax a hard look, pointed and severe. “…at least I have the self-awareness to admit it.”

Dax refused to rise to the bait, wrapping herself up in a security blanket of cocksure bravado. “Sure you do,” she snorted. “Just as long as you’ve got me around to call you on it.”

Kira rolled her eyes at that, but didn’t bother to argue. She was clearly deep in thought, and Dax wondered if she was even aware of her presence at all any more; she looked distant and hazy, like she was back on Cardassia going through the whole ordeal all over again.

“It wasn’t so difficult,” she mused after a moment. “I mean, well, relatively speaking. Being used and abused by the Cardassians… that’s nothing new for a Bajoran. Getting kidnapped and tortured and all the rest of it… after what happened during the occupation, that’s nothing. I’d seen friends and family suffer worse things than that before I was old enough stand upright.” Dax opened her mouth to say how sorry she was, but Kira cut her off with an impatient wave, a wordless gesture to say _‘that’s not the point’_. “I know their people. I know what they’re capable of, and this was nothing. Honestly, by their standards, it was almost civil.”

She sighed, turning her face away, as though embarrassed. Dax wanted to take that face in her hands, bring it back, look right into it and remind her that she was safe now, that it was all over, that the Bajoran people were free and so was she… but she didn’t. Kira’s eyes were haunted as she stared numbly down at the table, and Dax didn’t want to risk upsetting the ghosts she saw in them.

“Go on,” she said instead, very softly.

Kira closed her eyes. “That’s not what bothers me,” she admitted. “It’s not what they did, or even why they did it.” She sighed, looking pensive and thoughtful, like she was still trying to piece together everything that had happened, everything she’d been through. “Ghemor was a good man,” she went on after a moment. “He was an honourable man… so of course the Cardassians would want to put an end to him. There’s no room for kindness or compassion on Cardassia.” She spat the words, bitter and angry, wounds still raw even after so long, and Dax leaned back, giving Kira as much personal space as she could, letting her feel safe without interrupting. “It was terrible, what they tried to do to him. But it’s not surprising, not at all. And it’s not what bothers me.”

Her fingers were twitching, clenching and unclenching, and Dax reached across the table to take her hand. “What does?” she asked.

There was a kind of comfort in this, Dax thought, and hated herself for it. Maybe she could blame Joran Belar for that too, because she couldn’t deny feeling a kind of perverse solace as she watched the conflict and the pain ripple across Kira’s face, watched her struggle with herself, watched unresisting as she took back her hand so that she could put it together with the other in her lap, wringing them together as if the twisting of her fingers could help her to hone her thoughts.

Dax recognised the futile gesture; she’d seen it in Kira several times, and even in Benjamin once or twice when he was faced with a particular challenge and didn’t have his baseball on hand to play with and distract him. For herself, she preferred to hold her hands safely behind her back, keeping them out of sight when they trembled. The conflict wasn’t for anyone to see, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Dax knew that, so she let Kira have her moment in peace. And it was only a moment; Kira sighed again when she’d composed herself, a low breathless sort of sound, more anxiety than sorrow, and looked back up at Dax.

“For a moment…” she murmured, low enough that it was almost a whisper, and as much as Dax wanted to respect her personal space, she had no choice but to lean in so that she could hear. “And it was just a moment… a small, stupid moment… but still a _moment_ …” She turned away again, not just with her face now but her whole body. “For one small stupid moment… I actually let myself believe them.”

Dax swallowed. She didn’t know what to say, or even if she should just sit quietly and say nothing at all, just let Kira work through her feelings aloud or inside her head, however she saw fit. She ached to say something, though, anything at all, to offer any words of comfort she could, however futile or empty, to throw out all the hollow placations she could think of even if they meant less than nothing. She wanted to help, to make the confession easier even if she could do nothing for the emotions underneath.

Kira didn’t give her the chance to try, though. She just took another deep breath — cleansing her soul as well as her lungs, Dax supposed — and pressed on as though she really had forgotten Dax was there at all. 

“I mean, I knew. At least, fundamentally. I knew myself. I knew who I was. I knew where I’d been, what I’d done… I knew _me_. But they were so… they were so sure, so convincing.” She wouldn’t meet Dax’s eye, seeming almost embarrassed by her perceived weakness, and Dax tried to make it easier for her by staring down into the dregs of her raktajino, feigning fascination with the light playing across the dark surface. “They were telling the truth,” Kira murmured. “That’s what made it so frightening. And I know it wasn’t my truth, but it could have been.”

“I understand,” Dax heard herself whisper, hoarse and ragged, and hated how true it was.

Kira looked up sharply at that, mouth half open. She didn’t speak, but Dax could practically hear the unvoiced argument already forming in her head. _No, you don’t understand at all_. Dax wished that she was right, that she really didn’t understand; honestly, she didn’t think Kira believed it any more than she did, but it was a reflex in her to deny empathy to anyone who wasn’t of her people. _You’re not Bajoran, you’re not one of us, you couldn’t possibly understand_. Dax had heard it more times than she could count, whether it was true or not. Honestly, if she had found the courage to say it again now, Dax wouldn’t have argued; it would be easier than the real truth, after all, and it would have granted her a few more precious moments of denial, let them both believe that she really didn’t understand. Kira bit her tongue instead, though, refusing to say the words, and so they both had no choice but to take Dax’s murmuring for what it was: true and honest and terribly painful.

“I suppose you do,” Kira said at last, sounding as melancholy as Dax felt; she looked up again, eyes bright, and Dax knew what was coming next even before she said it, knew she’d been baited, knew that the spotlight was about to spin round on her again, and was powerless to evade. “And that’s another reason I thought you might want to come with me on this pilgrimage.”

Dax grimaced. It was a safer argument than _‘you need some time away from the station’_ , at the very least, but that didn’t stop Dax from turning her face away and closing her eyes, struggling for a moment to block out all those thoughts and memories that she didn’t want, the anger still bubbling in her. She shouldn’t have said anything, she thought viciously, and knowing that just made it all the more frustrating. She should have kept that damn smart mouth of hers shut, should’ve let Kira talk herself through all of her residual emotions and just listened wordlessly. She should have been a good friend, dammit, a caring and compassionate friend, a good friend who nodded and smiled sadly and didn’t say anything. She should have been better than this.

Now Kira had ammunition against her, fuel for the fire of her insistences that Dax wasn’t fine either, the argument Dax knew was waiting to rise up again, a fresh weapon against everything she didn’t want to admit. This was supposed to be all about Kira and her turmoil, she thought, and hated how helpless she felt, how and angry and frightened. It wasn’t supposed to be about her. It wasn’t supposed to be about this.

“Kira,” she said. She’d intended it to be a warning — _‘back away now, if you know what’s good for you’_ — but it came out sounding more like a plea. “I’m not like you. I’m not Bajoran, and I’m not spiritual. I don’t need to meditate or talk to the Prophets or…”

“I know,” Kira interrupted, firm but gentle. “I know the Trill aren’t exactly a spiritual people. You’re all too high-and-mighty for that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from this, and it doesn’t mean that some time away from the station won’t do you some good.” She touched Dax’s arm, light but filled with meaning. “Dax. You’re in that holosuite every second you’re not on duty. Don’t you think it’s about time you did something a little more proactive? Or at least got some real air for a change?”

“I don’t need air,” Dax replied sullenly, in the half-second before her brain caught up with her mouth and pointed out that that was a stupid thing to say.

Kira, of course, didn’t miss a beat. “Well, you certainly don’t need any more time in the holosuite,” she quipped readily. “What do you do in there all day, anyway?”

Dax bit her tongue, and let the sharpness of the pain brace her; if she’d been alone, maybe she would have bitten her lip instead, let her teeth draw some blood and cool the heat in her head, as she’d done so many times over the last couple of weeks. It was intoxicating, she’d discovered, how easily the skin broke under her teeth, how sharp and soothing the sting, how sweet the taste of blood…

She had never been much of a masochist before, though she enjoyed the occasional fist-fight as much as any Trill with Klingon tendencies did. Over the last couple of weeks, however, she’d found herself much more drawn towards the darker side of her own suffering, pleasure in her own pain, as deep and as potent as anything Joran had gotten from anyone else’s. It had become a source of strength, and she found that both frightening and invigorating. It was so easy to bite down on her lip, to draw a little blood and let the taste of it gorge the need for violence, if only for a moment. It was so easy to satisfy those twisted urges with the sting of pain, the snap of her teeth, the sweet release… It was so easy to hurt herself to curb the anger, and though there was a part of her that couldn’t help acknowledging Kira’s point — maybe it really was time she stepped away from the holographic violence, at least for a day or two — that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

And so, because she couldn’t fight the truth, she braced against the pain instead, let it focus her, used it to keep her from saying something they would both regret, lashing out as she was wont to do when she felt trapped or cornered or afraid, lashing out as Joran was wont to do with fire and fury.

“It’s not ‘all day’,” she argued, when she finally trusted herself enough to speak without screaming. “It’s a few hours at most. You’re so melodramatic.”

Kira ignored that. “You didn’t answer the question,” she pointed out with a sigh. “Is it that ridiculous Klingon martial arts program you love so much?”

Dax bristled. She felt like she’d been put on the spot, like Kira was judging her, like she suddenly had to defend herself and her choices where she’d never had to before, and that made her even more aggressive; it felt like an invasion of privacy, but at the same time it brought to light everything she didn’t want to admit, all the reasons why it made sense for Kira to be judging her now, the reasons why she was spending so much time in the damned holosuite, all the things that Kira could see through.

She didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to think that Kira might be right to judge her. And so she shook off the idea, focusing instead on the scowl, the anger, the righteous resentment, the part of her that wanted so desperately to draw blood from her lip instead of chewing her tongue. Indignation was easier than acceptance, at least right now, and she indulged it completely. Who was Kira to demand answers from her? Who was she to ask Dax to justify how she chose to spend her hard-earned off-duty hours? Who the hell was she to demand any explanations from her at all?

It wasn’t the righteousness that struck her, but the fury that went with it. It didn’t feel as simple or straightforward as she wanted it to; the anger didn’t feel valid, and she hated that she couldn’t give herself over to it even as she gasped with relief that she still had some shred of control left.

All Kira had done was ask her a question. She was just trying to make conversation, that was all. It wasn’t right for Dax to be so angry about it, to feel so accused, so insulted by something so pointless and silly. So Kira was curious. So maybe she was even a little concerned. So what? Why in the world should Dax care at all, much less be offended? She knew the answer, of course, but it frightened her to think about it.

Instead, she took a deep, steadying breath, pushed the righteous indignation aside and struggled again to hold her temper under control. _It’s just a question_ , she reminded herself. _It’s not an inquisition. It’s just a question. Stop taking everything so personally._

It was easier said than done, of course, and when she finally brought herself to answer Kira’s question, the words were gritted out through tightly clenched teeth. “Not that it’s any of your business, but if you must know, yes. I find that a good workout helps me to relax.”

“Oh, I’m sure a ‘good workout’ is very relaxing,” Kira shot back readily; her words were light, but there was a hard edge to her voice that said she’d probably picked up on Dax’s unwarranted aggression and was worried about it. Not reckless enough to say anything, of course, but worried just the same. “But I’d hardly use that word to describe anything with the word ‘Klingon’ in it.”

“That’s because you don’t know the first thing about Klingons,” Dax pointed out. It wasn’t an accusation, simply a statement of fact, and Kira conceded the truth of it with a self-deprecating shrug. “And you should be very glad that I’m not Curzon any more. If you’d asked him that question instead of me, he would have given you a very different answer. And a much more explicit one, too.” She quirked a meaningful eyebrow. “If you catch my drift.”

“A Cardassian vole would catch your drift,” Kira muttered, rolling her eyes, though Dax couldn’t help noting the way her ears had turned a little pink, the barest hint of a blush creeping unbidden up her neck. She ignored it, though, and Dax’s smug little grin, refusing to be baited into focusing on pointless things that didn’t matter. “Come on, Jadzia. Even you can’t deny you’ve been going at it a little excessively over the last couple of weeks.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dax huffed. “Anyway, isn’t this whole thing supposed to be about you?”

Kira inhaled deeply. It was an odd sound, a little too controlled to be a sigh but still bearing the weight of frustration.

“Sometimes I forget you’re so much older than me,” she murmured after a moment, seemingly apropos of nothing. “It always amazes me, how stubborn you can be when you set your mind to it. You’re supposed to be worldly and experienced, but the way you refuse to look inward and accept…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I’ve been through a lot. I know I have. But I’m not denying that. I know I need time to heal. I know I need breathing room so I can find myself again. I know I need to get in touch with my roots, to commune with the Prophets and ask their forgiveness for doubting that I was one of theirs. I know all of that, and that’s why I’m going to Bajor. But you…” She closed her eyes, but only for a moment, a second or two too long for a blink, and when she opened them again they were dark with sorrow. “Sometimes I think you’d let yourself die before you’d let someone else help you.”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” Dax quipped, straightening her back. “Well, then, the next time I’m dying, I promise I’ll call for help.” Kira didn’t so much as crack a smile, though, and Dax gave up the feint at gallows humour with a grimace. “All right, fine. I admit, you’re not the only one who’s been through an ordeal. But you’re also not the only one who knows how to take care of themselves. I know what I need, Kira, and it’s not real air or a pilgrimage on Bajor or—”

“Dax.”

Kira’s eyes were brighter when Dax met them, dangerous in a way that she didn’t often show in public, and the sight of them cut off Dax’s hollow diatribe so much more effectively than the sound of her name hitching in Kira’s throat.

She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “Kira.”

Kira took her hands, letting her thumbs run across the backs of her knuckles. Dax wondered if she could feel the places beneath the skin where Doctor Bashir had spent the last three nights in a row knitting things back together, broken bones and torn ligaments fixed in less than a heartbeat. It was nothing like a real Klingon battle, all those quick fixes and shortcuts, pain turned to nothing with the hiss of a hypospray. She wondered too if Kira could feel the bloodlust humming beneath the surface, the burning in her veins, rage and hatred spitting and seething like molten steel, a bat’leth melted down to nothing, a proud weapon tamed and made useless. She wondered if Kira could feel the violence in the way her fingertips trembled, so much brutality just itching to get out. It was all so raw, so visceral; surely Kira could feel it in her. They were barely even touching, but surely she could feel it… surely she could…

If she could, though, she said nothing of it. For a very long time, she didn’t say anything at all; she just let her fingertips rest where they would, light pressure and soft skin against rough callouses and freshly-knitted bones, allowing Dax to take what she wanted from the contact, or nothing at all. And for a while, that was enough for both of them.

It was Dax who broke the moment at last, and broke the contact with it. She pulled away, taking back both of her hands and wrapping them around her half-forgotten cup, not because there was anything left to drink but because the stillness was too much to endure. Not too long ago, she had been a patient soul; she would have been in her element in the midst of all this silence and stillness, at home with tranquillity and unspoken words, but now it made her feel itchy and uncomfortable, like there were insects crawling under her skin, tickling and stinging by turns, and it took more strength than she had to keep from fidgeting. She felt like her nerves were on fire, like the rage igniting her veins was radiating outwards, out and out until it infected everything around her, until it infected even Kira, and she couldn’t allow that to happen. Kira had suffered too much violence in her life; Dax would not be responsible for any more. The urge to flee rose up within her, powerful and entirely overwhelming.

“Jadzia,” Kira said again, softer. She watched sadly as Dax lurched to her feet, flinching away from the sound of her name, that shy little girl’s name, and tried to reach out to her; something stopped her, though, in the moment before she made contact, and her fingers hung suspended in the air between them, trembling uselessly.

“I’m due back at Ops,” Dax mumbled, though they both knew it was a lie. “I promised Chief O’Brien I’d help him with—”

“Jadzia.”

It cut her down, stopping her in her tracks. She stood there, twitching indecisively, and clasped her hands behind her back so that Kira wouldn’t see that they were shaking as well. “What?” she demanded, forced impatience rasping in her throat. “I’m—”

“Come with me,” Kira urged, powering through Dax’s mumbling and her fidgeting. “Come to Bajor with me.”

“Kira.” Dax swallowed hard. This was more difficult than she’d anticipated, and she didn’t know why. “I don’t…”

“For me,” Kira pressed quietly. “If you won’t come for yourself, come for me. Like I said, I could invite Bareil, and I will if you say no… but I would really appreciate having a companion who… understands.” There was just the faintest twinkle in her eye when she regarded Dax then, like she was challenging her, like she knew that a challenge was the only thing Dax would respond to just then. “You do still understand, I take it?”

“Of course I do.” The words were out before Dax could stop them, warm and breathless on the air and condemning her completely. She thought of Joran, of the violence inside of her, and wished she could go to the holosuite and vent some of it. “I know how it feels to not trust your own memories. You know I do.”

For just a second after she said it, she was sure she heard a malicious little laugh in the back of her mind, familiar but unnatural, the unholy aura of an uninvited guest; it was an unnerving thought, but far more so was the moment later when she remembered that there was nothing ‘uninvited’ about this particular guest. The laughter may have been phantasmal, but its owner was not; she had invited him, taken him into her, welcomed him… and now she had to live with him. The realisation was disturbing, like ice down her spine, and she shivered.

“Dax?”

“All right,” she blurted out; in that moment, she would have said or done anything to silence the laughter, to suppress the dark thoughts that went along with them, and more than anything else to stop Kira looking at her like that. “If it really means that much to you.”

Kira beamed like a small child seeing the sun rise for the first time, awestruck and excited. “You’ll come?”

“I’ll come.” As beautiful as it was, the look on Kira’s face did little to keep the dread from settling in the pit of Dax’s stomach. “If you really, really want me to, I’ll go on your little ‘pilgrimage’.”

Kira was positively glowing now. She was almost ethereal, alight with exuberance, so caught up in her little victory that the part of Dax that wasn’t already lost found itself thinking that maybe that in itself was enough of a reason to do this. She could hold the hounds in her head at bay, she thought, if only Kira would keep looking at her like that. She could, she was sure of it. She could keep her temper under control, could keep herself under control, could keep Joran—

 _Don’t be so sure,_ the spectral non-spectre murmured, and Dax shuddered again.

Kira, of course, didn’t notice. “You won’t regret it,” she promised. “You’ll see. This will be just what you need.”

“I hope so,” Dax said, and bit her lip until it bled.


	2. Chapter 2

Benjamin, of course, was sickeningly enthusiastic about the whole thing.

“It’s about time,” he grinned when she raised the subject. “I’ve been telling you to take some time off for years now.”

Dax rolled her eyes. As always, it seemed that Benjamin knew her too well for her own good, and she was grateful that she’d had the foresight to bring up the issue in private; the last thing she needed was the entire senior staff snickering behind their hands.

“I wouldn’t say ‘years’,” she muttered, irritable but self-deprecating. “Weeks, maybe.”

“I suppose that depends on whether you count all the times I told Curzon the same thing,” he replied with a wry smile. “You’re every bit as stubborn as he was, and then some.”

His expression flickered as he finished speaking, turning briefly sober, and his fingers flexed at his side. He looked like he wanted to reach for her, like he wanted to touch her arm or her shoulder, but remembered just in time that that would be playing the wrong role. She was asking permission for leave from her commanding officer, not joking with her old friend, and it was important that they both keep the distinction, at least in practice.

Benjamin was a laid-back sort of commander, and banter with his senior officers was far from unheard of, but Dax noted with some pride that he always made the effort to draw at least some lines between them when they were on duty; a shared laugh or a joke was acceptable, maybe even encouraged sometimes, but physical contact and advice was strictly out of bounds. Well, for the post part, anyway. The young initiate still alive in Jadzia approved of that approach, though the rebellious symbiont in her belly enjoyed making him push those boundaries as often as possible.

“Curzon’s stubbornness was the stuff of legends,” she reminded him with a smile, daring him with her eyes to cuff her shoulder as he would have done to her predecessor.

Benjamin snorted a derisive laugh, but didn’t break his self-imposed rule. “You’ll get no argument from me. The old man was the most indulgent person I ever met in my life, but just try getting him to take a day off when he actually needed it.” He shook his head, marvelling as he did sometimes at how similar two vastly different faces could be. “Just like you.”

“Well, I don’t need it,” Dax argued, petulant. “And neither did Curzon, all those times you tried to convince him that he did.”

Benjamin grunted; like so many of their little arguments, this was a years-long dispute, and they both knew there was no hope for reconciliation probably as long as either of them lived. Benjamin would say one thing and Dax would say the opposite; he would accuse her of being bull-headed and she’d yell right back that he was a callow young pup who didn’t know his ass from his elbow. Well, perhaps that was more Curzon than Jadzia, but the principle remained the same even now. They would argue themselves in circles for hours on end over silly little things that didn’t matter, eventually giving up — _‘agree to disagree’_ , as Benjamin was so fond of phrasing it — and starting a new game of chess instead. It was one of the most endearing aspects of their friendship, albeit also one of the most frustrating. Dax wouldn’t have it any other way, of course, and she knew that Benjamin wouldn’t either.

“You know,” she murmured, feigning thoughtfulness and trying entirely too hard to sound like she’d only just thought of something. “I did promise to help Chief O’Brien recalibrate the ODN relay. I really ought to—”

“You ‘really ought to’ get packing,” Benjamin said, cutting her off with a chuckle and a shake of his head; he really did know her far too well, she thought sullenly. “You know as well as I do that Major Kira doesn’t take kindly to excuses.”

Dax shrugged, the picture of innocence even as she returned his boyish grin. “I don’t think the chief takes kindly to me using him as one all the time either,” she pointed out. “But you can’t blame a girl for trying.”

“A noble effort,” Benjamin agreed lightly, then at long last he gave up his feint at being Commander Sisko, giving her that cuff on the shoulder that she’d hoped for. “Now go and pack for your vacation.”

“It’s not a vacation,” Dax told him, already halfway towards the door. “Apparently, it’s a ‘pilgrimage’.”

He blinked. “What’s the difference?”

“Hell if I know,” Dax replied, and sauntered out.

As she headed back to her quarters, she couldn’t help thinking that he was right. Jadzia and Curzon weren’t really all that similar, but they certainly shared the same stubborn refusal to accept that someone else might know what was best for them. Curzon was every bit as bull-headed as Benjamin said he was, brash and arrogant and absolutely certain that he knew everything; Jadzia was the opposite in a lot of ways, but she had something of his hardened resolve, that feverish determination to prove herself and not let anyone else do it for her. In that, at least, she didn’t have to try very hard at all to mimic her predecessor. She couldn’t help smiling at the way Benjamin teased her for it, and the way that even Kira seemed to know that sometimes there was simply no talking to her. She was bull-headed too, just like Curzon was… and just like him, she was also terribly proud of it. Benjamin found it deeply amusing; Kira, having never had the misfortune of being charmed by Curzon, just found the whole thing infuriating.

As it turned out, another thing that Jadzia and Curzon could agree on was that packing for a pilgrimage (whatever the hell that was) was no easy task.

Dax had been on more vacations than she could count over the last three centuries, and she had pretty much perfected the practice of preparation. It was simple: she knew what she needed, she knew what she wanted, and she knew what to leave behind (though whether she had the willpower to actually do so was another question entirely). Most of her vacation time, at least over the last hundred years or so, had been spent on Risa, and Dax had quickly learned than even packing an extra shirt was a waste of time there. It had been an obscenely long time since she’d actually needed to think about things like practicality, and for the first time in a good two or three lifetimes, she found herself reduced to sitting helplessly on the edge of her bed and staring into an empty bag.

It didn’t help, of course, that she had frankly no idea what a Bajoran pilgrimage entailed. As she’d told Kira repeatedly, she wasn’t exactly a spiritual sort of person, and religious retreats and soul-searching were hardly her field of expertise. Besides, she was a Dax, and when Daxes went on vacation, they sure as hell didn’t go to ‘find themselves’ or ‘commune with the Prophets’. Self-awareness was practically second nature to most Trills, and all the more so for joined ones, who had the added benefit of learning all about themselves at their zhian’tara (something that Jadzia still needed to suffer through, and had spent vast amounts of time over the last two years trying very hard not to think about). There really wasn’t any call for pilgrimages or any other such nonsense. They were naturally zen; they sure as hell didn’t need a vacation to make them any more so.

She wouldn’t tell Kira that, of course, but for the time being it left her in a bit of confusion. Weren’t these things all supposed to be about communing with nature and casting off comfort and luxury or something? Honestly, Dax didn’t know the first thing about it, but anything that required her to cast off her comforts and luxuries was a thing she didn’t want anything to do with. Not that she had any intention of sharing that little tidbit with Kira, either; the major had been kind and thoughtful enough to ask her along, and it clearly meant a great deal to her — both the trip in itself, and Dax’s company, for some unfathomable reason — and Dax had no intention of letting her penchant for pampering ruin it for her.

No, she decided. She would make do. She would pack the bare essentials — comfortable clothes and good book or three (the real ink-and-paper kind, that is, none of those PADDs that Benjamin and the other young people loved so much; they had their place, she couldn’t deny, but the joy of wrapping her hands around a real book was a luxury she simply would not deny herself, and especially not on vacation) — and leave the rest to chance, fate, or Kira’s dubious compassion.

The evening was still relatively young when she finally finished, but she found that she was tired just the same. Just thinking about the days to come was exhausting enough, and she found it difficult to shake visions of Kira exhorting the virtues of real planet-side exploration — _‘so much more exciting than your silly holosuites, don’t you think?’_ — while Dax made a fool of herself by tripping over rocks and roots and anything else that got in her way, and probably ended up dead from insect bites (if she was lucky). She could fight her way through an army if she had to, probably even single-handed, but drop her on a hillside without a weapon or a computer to end the program when she got bored, and she was as helpless as any one of those ‘Starfleet types’ that Kira derided so often for being pampered and spoiled.

Kira, of course, knew all of this perfectly well. They’d run a mission together about a year ago that had required a detour to one of Bajor’s moons to ‘commission’ a piece-of-junk Bajoran flyer (if it could even be called that), and the hour or so it had taken to get the damn thing up and running had been among the most trying of Dax’s career. The bugs and beasts were bad enough, but a flyer without sensors or a half-decent propulsion system was another thing entirely, and she had spent the entire duration of the mission — at least until they’d crashed, but that was another story — feeling out of her element and thoroughly miserable. It was several months before Kira stopped giving her a hard time about it and longer still before she stopped smirking and shaking her head every time they crossed paths.

This time would be different, Dax decided. If Kira was dragging her along on this little ‘pilgrimage’ just to bait her again, then she would have to try a whole lot harder. This time, Dax would be the perfect pioneer, the perfect picture of a golden age warrior and as hardened and practiced in the wilderness as any damned Bajoran ex-terrorist.

She went to bed a few hours later with a fresh sense of vigour and determination; maybe she wouldn’t have any fun on this enforced vacation (or ‘pilgrimage’; whatever worked), but at least she had something to focus on while she was there. At least she had something to anticipate, something she could brace for and prepare herself to fight.

Kira was an excellent companion, and she challenged Dax in the best possible ways, constantly forcing her to rethink all of her preconceptions, both of herself and of everything around her. She was a good friend and a good soul, and Dax enjoyed spending time with her. No, more than that, she enjoyed those challenges, that pressure to be a better person herself. She enjoyed bracing for the judgement and the mockery, rising to the bait of a fresh new challenge, striving to better herself so that next time Kira would have to work a little harder if she wanted her to rise again. If Kira was expecting Dax to give her a free source of amusement while she sought her soul among the Prophets… well, Dax thought, she’d better start rethinking those expectations.

When she closed her eyes, it was with a grin on her face to match even Curzon’s most mischievous, and though she wasn’t quite looking forward to the next day’s departure, at least she wasn’t dreading it so much.

It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

*

_Bajor was beautiful._

_Even Dax, who would be the first to admit that this place was very far away from anything she’d call home, couldn’t deny that there was an almost ethereal beauty to it. Fresh streams of clear water, a sky so bright it left her dazzled and half-blind, and a panoramic view that stole what little breath she still had left after the climb. From up here, atop a mountain with no name staring down over a world touched by sunlight, it was easy to see why the Bajorans were such a spiritual people, how they found their faith in the Prophets so effortlessly. Dax was as far from spiritual as a soul could be, but even she felt touched by something greater than herself as she stood there, gazing down at the perfect curve of a planet that had suffered so much and still held such beauty, such hope, and such faith._

_“You were right,” she heard herself say. “I did need this.”_

_Kira was watching her, eyes narrowed and darkened by something Dax couldn’t make out; they seemed to take in all the sunlight from the sky and hold it prisoner. Dax was mesmerised by the sight of her, enthralled by her eyes and the passion in her face, made breathless by her every breath. She couldn’t remember ever seeing anything quite so beautiful as this: the sky, the sun, the scenery… and Kira, most of all. Kira Nerys with those dark eyes, those eyes that seemed to hold all the secrets of Bajor inside them, those eyes that looked at Dax as if she was everything and nothing at the same time. Beautiful, just like Bajor. Kira Nerys, and the way she looked around her, too, as though this holy place was the essence of her soul made solid, as though it held the answers to all the questions she’d never needed to ask._

_“You don’t belong here,” she said, a quiet observation that carried no hint of threat. “This is my home.”_

_“I know.” Dax bowed her head, as though Kira were a vedek about to bless her. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”_

_Kira smiled, and as she did some of the darkness in her eyes seemed to evaporate, stolen sunlight radiating out from them like a wormhole in reverse, like she had captured all the secrets of her precious Prophets and was trying to bring them out in a way that Dax, neither Bajoran nor spiritual, could see and understand._

_Dax was not worthy of the Prophets. She knew that, and had long since made peace with it. She wasn’t Bajoran; she was Trill. In seven lifetimes — eight, including the one that would never be named — she had never felt the least inclination towards the spiritual or theological. She had no gods, and didn’t want any either. She was content with what she could see and hear and feel, tangible ideas that she could reason and learn and understand. She was content with existence as she knew it, simple as it was, and didn’t waste her time thinking of anything beyond that. She was alive, and that was all she needed to know._

_Until now, anyway. Here, in this moment, surrounded by the impossible beauty of a world that had been ravaged almost to destruction, stood next to the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, feeling the world come to life around them, light and beauty in every direction… for the first time in all her lifetimes, she felt touched by something more, something that went beyond who she was. She did not understand it, but for the first time in all her lifetimes, she didn’t care. She felt, and she almost understood._

_Kira smiled, watching the sunlight play across her face, an imperfect reflection of the beauty in her eyes. “I could share a lot more with you…” she murmured, breath warm in Dax’s ear, tickling with promise. “If you like.”_

_Dax swallowed, suddenly very aware of the sweat drying on her skin, branding her with the flush of fatigue; she was naked, of course, and though she was not ashamed of her body, she felt exposed and vulnerable in this sacred place, unable to conceal the mark of exertion. They’d spent the whole morning scaling the mountain without a single rest-stop, and though Dax was no slouch in the fitness department, even she was feeling a little winded by now. Kira, of course, wasn’t showing any signs of flagging at all; from the look of her, she could probably climb another mountain right now and still not break a sweat. She was flushed too, of course, but it had nothing to do with exertion, and the shifting colours of her skin, the flashes of warmth reflecting the heat of the sun above them just as potently as her eyes reflected its light, only made Dax blush even deeper._

_“I think I’d like that,” she whispered, inexplicably breathless._

_Kira’s smile widened. “I’m glad,” she said, and kissed her._

_It was by pure instinct that Dax closed her eyes. She wanted to keep them open, to take in the moment just as she had taken in the scenery, the sunlight and the smile on Kira’s face; she wanted to take it all in, to absorb it all, the way she tasted and the press of her bare skin, the scent of sweat and earth and nature, the glow turning her skin to something holy. She wanted to memorise the fingers threading through her hair and the wire-thin body pressing up against hers, the wet slide of Kira’s tongue in her mouth, the soft little gasps passing between them, everything. Here, in the most secluded and spiritual corner of Bajor, here where nobody but the Prophets could see them, Dax wanted to see them too. Here, in this most perfect of moments, she wanted to see everything._

_She wanted so desperately to keep her eyes open, to drink it all in, to use all of her senses at once, but the moment overwhelmed her, contact and emotion and Nerys, Dax’s heart and soul colliding within her like a cataclysm, and she was helpless, disarmed and disoriented. She wanted to keep her eyes open, to lay herself bare to everything this place could give her, but she had no choice. She was weak and she was small and she was as nothing here; her eyes were closed before she could think to stop them, and once they were not even the Prophets themselves could find the strength to open them again._

_Kira was passionate, though Dax had expected that. She kissed like she was possessed, frenzied and forceful, like she believed they would be torn from each other at any moment, like she wanted Dax to be wearing her mark when it happened, like she could somehow brand herself onto her skin, breathe herself into her mouth, drive herself inside of her, like she could make herself so much a part of Dax that they would never be separated, like she could nestle in her belly with the symbiont and not take up any extra room. Dax would have told her that it was pointless, that she was already inside her just like that, but she could not summon the breath to speak, and who could think of words when Kira was kissing her?_

_She kissed her as though the world were ending, this world so alive with beauty and spirituality, this world that had survived everything; she kissed her as though they would look up when this was over and find that Bajor had burned to ashes around them, as though there was nothing left for either of them but this._

_It was all too easy for Dax to drown in it, to melt into the startling familiarity of Kira’s mouth and hands and body, the startling familiarity of everything, the feeling that they had done this a thousand times before, the feeling that it came as naturally as breathing, as though there was nothing new in any of this at all. It had the feel of something so much deeper than it should have been, something ethereal and eternal, something like faith, something that reached so far beyond either one of them. It felt like a gift from the Prophets, something holy and untouchable, and Dax didn’t even stop to think that that was absurd, that she wasn’t Bajoran, that the Bajoran gods had no place for a Trill in their timeless theology. She didn’t stop to think at all; she didn’t stop to do anything. She couldn’t._

_The moment overpowered her completely, leaving her helpless and hopeless, whimpering and clinging to Kira with everything she had in her. Kira was the driving force behind them both, the strength holding them both upright. But then, wasn’t she always that way? Wasn’t she always the one driving Dax to new places and new challenges and new ideas? Wasn’t she always the driving force behind everything Dax thought and felt and was?_

_Dax didn’t know; she could barely remember who she was, much less how she defined herself. She couldn’t remember anything at all, only the way Kira’s body felt against her own, warm and strong, and the way her tongue tasted in her mouth, wet and slick and so familiar, so achingly and startlingly familiar…_

_They had done this before, she realised, even as she lost herself to the strangeness of that idea. It was old and new, and both at the same time, but then wasn’t that Dax all over? An old man and a young woman, a stupid adolescent boy and a wise ageing mother, the gift of the symbiont inside of her. Dax had always known how to balance the old against the new, wisdom and experience against youth and exuberance, the familiar with the strange. It was the nature of the Trill. Kira knew that about her; Dax remembered hearing her say once that she envied that a little, being so old and so young at the same time, so world-worn and yet still so eager to learn. Dax was a paradox most of the time, a maelstrom of memories, but right now Kira was so much more than she had ever been. Kira, who was a study in contradiction. Kira, who Dax knew with all the intimacy of a lover even as she felt like she had never even met her before. Kira, who stole her breath, whose heart beat in rhythm with her own. Kira, who she knew so well but would never truly understand. Kira, who was kissing her as though they’d been doing it all their lives, as though they’d never done it before, as though the universe was nothing more or less than the sum of them._

_It felt like a lifetime before they pulled apart. No, more than that; a lifetime was nothing to a Trill. It felt like ten lifetimes, each one more spectacular than the last. Dax was panting, urgent and desperate for so much more than air, and she could hear the echo of Kira’s breath too, a hazy backbeat at the edge of her awareness, drumming in perfect rhythm with her own. She forced herself to calm down, steadied herself against the nearest solid surface, fumbling blindly for purchase… and then, at long last, she opened her eyes._

_Everything was different._

_All the beauty that had struck her before she’d closed her eyes was gone, leaving behind a wasteland of devastation, a world turned dark and twisted and terrible. The perfect bright sky had gone black with clouds, swollen with the promise of storms, and the scenery that had left her speechless a moment (a lifetime, no, ten lifetimes) ago had all been carved out and turned to craters and destruction and death. The air was choked and thick with smoke, the ground blackened and lifeless. There was nothing left of the Bajor that was, nothing left of anything at all but the charred remains of a world that had once been so impossibly beautiful._

_“I told you,” Kira murmured. She still stood at Dax’s side, as she had before, but her voice sounded different somehow, harsher and more dangerous. “You don’t belong here.”_

_Dax turned to look at her, to ask her what she meant, but the face that looked back at her wasn’t her Nerys any more._

_Vibrant red hair gone slick and black, featureless and undefined, and those eyes that had held the sun in them just a moment before were now void and unblinking. Skin that had been pink and flushed and alive was suddenly grey and half-dead, scaled and ridged and etched like stone. Markings she didn’t recognise, and a coldness in every part of her that was nothing at all like the woman Dax thought she knew, the Kira Nerys who was her friend and her… well, something._

_And yet, something in the face was familiar, just like the kiss had been, a strange sense that this was both the first and the hundredth time Dax had seen her like this, that she knew this version of Kira just as well as she knew the other, that somehow she still was the same Kira underneath. It felt wrong, every bit as twisted and broken as the world around them, the storms and the craters and the destruction, all of it, but still she couldn’t shake the sense of knowing, of understanding, of empathy with this creature — this Cardassian — that stood in front of her in Kira’s place._

_“What happened?” Dax heard herself whisper, gagging on the smoke-clogged air, and asking about so much more than the chaos all around them. Kira didn’t answer, of course; she was even more stoic as a Cardassian than as a Bajoran, Dax thought, and tried again, more specifically. “What happened to you?”_

_“You don’t belong here.”_

_The words chilled her, but she didn’t know why. She’d heard them before, and bowed her head to concede the truth of them, but right now, spilling from cold reptilian lips, that sinister Cardassian smile, knowing what those people had done to this world the first time they were here… it felt wrong. It felt alien and it felt wrong. Dax was cold all over — a strange sensation for a Trill who thrived on the chill — and had to fight to keep from shivering as those piercing obsidian eyes struck her to the soul._

_“You don’t belong here either,” she said out loud, feeling the swell of something unpleasant inside her, a primal kind of instinct that scared and thrilled her in equal measure. “The Bajorans fought for generations to be free of your people. You don’t belong here any more than I do.”_

_Kira hissed. “This is my home.”_

_Though the timbre of her voice was different, she still sounded so much like Kira, so much like Nerys. Even now, she was so alive, so alight with passion and intelligence, so sure of who and what she was. She looked so very different, but in her heart she was the same Kira Nerys that Dax had always known, the same beautiful Nerys who had kissed her._

_Dax’s heart ached, but her stomach seethed. She felt hot and angry, an uncomfortable sensation simmering beneath the surface, radiating out from where the symbiont rested. She didn’t recognise it at first, but it struck her like a blow just the same, heating her skin and firing her veins, chasing away the discordant cold and slicking her skin with sweat all over again. It was awful; she knew that much beyond a shadow of doubt._

_She needed to get away from here, she realised in a moment of half-blind panic. She needed to get away. Away from Bajor, away from this new Cardassian Kira, away from everything. She needed to get away, far away, before she did something everyone would regret, something stupid and dangerous. The certainty rose up in her, sharp and sudden, panic and fear clamouring inside of her, and she knew she had to go now but she couldn’t move. She was rooted to the spot, transfixed and terrified and utterly helpless. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything. All she could do was stare at Kira, this new Kira, this twisted Cardassian Kira, this alien creature that was the nightmare made manifest of everything that the real Kira hated._

_“What happened?” Dax asked again, tongue heavy and thick in her mouth. She could not run, could not breathe, but she could still speak. That much, at least, she still had. “What happened to you? What happened to this place? What happened?”_

_“You did.” Those haunting obsidian eyes carved right through her, tearing through her heart like the perfect edge of a Klingon bat’leth, and driving her to her knees. “This is your doing.”_

_And as she said it, Dax knew that it was true. She didn’t know how or why or what she’d done, but she felt the truth of it right down to her bones, the inescapable reality, the blame and the guilt and the shame. So much destruction, so much fire and violence, so much beauty torn apart and ripped away. Bajor and her people, the people who had already lost so much, who had watched their lives and souls be stripped away by the Cardassians, those soulless beasts, those sick and sordid monsters, the reptilian creature that Kira had become… the burnt-out husk of Bajor spreading out for miles in all directions, craters and storm clouds and destruction, and all of it by her hand. So much destruction, so much violence and devastation, so much pain, and it was all her doing. She didn’t know how, but she knew that it was._

_“I’m sorry,” she said, but the unpleasantness in her stomach told her that she didn’t mean it._

_She recognised the sensation now, that unknown-but-familiar, the twisted wrongness that was an inside echo of the world beyond. She recognised it now, as she would a phantom limb or the memory of summer: pure undiluted rage._

_“You’re not sorry,” Kira said. Her face gave away nothing of what she was feeling. “You don’t know how to be sorry.”_

_Dax swallowed. “It wasn’t my fault.”_

_“That’s a lie too.”_

_And it was. It hurt to admit, but it was. She wasn’t sorry, and it was her fault. There was nowhere to turn, no scapegoat to take the blame, nothing to diffuse. All the pain and hurt, the death and destruction, the terrible things stretching out as far as the eye could see… they were her doing, hers alone, and she could not change that with hollow apologies and meaningless placations. It was done, and she had done it._

_“They left me no choice.”_

_Kira laughed, cold and Cardassian. “Do you really expect me to believe that?” she demanded; there was no trace of Nerys in those icy obsidian eyes now, and they carved through the space in Dax’s head, piercing the corner of her that so desperately wanted to believe the lies, that so desperately wanted to be sorry. “There’s always a choice. You’re the one who taught me that. Remember?”_

_Dax didn’t remember. Not then. All she remembered was the rage, blood-red and ash-grey, thick as smoke and hot as fire, and she couldn’t think through it to remember anything else. She looked on the destruction again with new eyes, new thoughts and new feelings, and suddenly she didn’t even want to be sorry any more. She delighted in it, relished the chaos and the devastation, took pleasure from the pain. She thought about all the lives and homes lost and destroyed, the damage that would endure far beyond this moment. She thought about Bajor, about the Cardassians, about this Kira who was not Nerys, about the obsidian in her eyes, the ferocity still sparking behind them, the passion that was still so Bajoran, the fire in her heart turned frozen in a cold-blooded chest, those lifeless reptilian lips._

_“You did this,” Kira said again. “You don’t belong here.”_

_Over and over, she said it, again and again, until Dax couldn’t take any more, until her fists were balled at her sides, until even the devastation around her was lost to a haze of red rage._

_“This is your doing.”_

_The rage boiled over, hot and lethal, and she struck out, violent and reflexive. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t even feel the impact as her knuckles struck stone-like flesh, Kira’s face or her chest, or even some other part completely; there was no way of knowing. She couldn’t feel or see or think, couldn’t do anything at all but strike and strike again. The anger overwhelmed her, the need to hurt, to explode, to destroy, and for a very long moment there was nothing else at all. It crashed over her head like a wave, a torrent, salt lashing her eyes and blinding her, and when she finally blinked away the sting and looked down, her hands were soaked through with blood._

_“You see?”_

_And just like that, with those two words, Kira was Kira again. Dax blinked away the last of the salt-sting, vision blurring back into focus, and there she was, as breathtaking as ever, smiling that beautiful Bajoran smile once again. The scales and ridges were all gone, the slicked-back hair and the obsidian in her eyes and the cold reptilian blood that extinguished all the fire in her heart… it was all gone now, all of it vanished like it had never been there at all, and all that remained was Kira Nerys. Beautiful, breathtaking Kira, her Kira, her Nerys. The Kira who had brought her to this place, the Kira who smiled that perfect smile, the Kira who closed her eyes and kissed her…_

_…Kira, standing before her with a knife in her chest._

_Dax did see, then. She saw the destruction, all of it made manifest in the hole in Kira’s chest. She saw the blood rushing out to fill the space between them, staining Kira’s skin, soaking Dax’s hands and the knife, its handle still trembling between her fingers. She saw the shudder in Kira’s shoulders, saw the gasp as she choked on her last breath, saw that she was still smiling._

_This was her doing, she realised once again. The blood, the pain, the destruction. All of it, her doing. Bajor was dead and Kira was dying and it was all her fault, her doing, all of it, all her fault…_

_She tried to scream, but no sound came out. She tried to run away, but she was fixed in place, legs like solid stone, hands locked like a vice around the handle of the knife. She tried to breathe, but the air caught in her throat, a ragged choking that echoed the last vestiges of Kira’s breath. She tried and tried and tried, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t save Bajor, and she couldn’t save Kira, so what was the point in trying to do anything?_

_“You see?” Kira asked again, voice as lifeless as her face as the blood drained from her. “You see what you’ve done?”_

_Dax bowed her head. That much, at least, she could still do._

_“You left me no choice.”_

*

“Computer, lights!”

Bolting upright in bed, it took Dax a few long moments to realise that the ragged voice screaming her awake was in fact her own. It was rather longer than that before her breathing returned to normal, and longer still before she was calm enough to feel even remotely like herself again. Her quarters felt very small, cramped and claustrophobic, the walls and ceiling closing in on her, swerving and swaying against the darkness in the half-second before the computer chirped its acknowledgement and flooded the room with light.

The momentary blindness that followed was almost a relief.

She shook her head, clearing it, and as the shadows of the dream started to fall away, eyes focusing with practiced familiarity on the comfortable worldly possessions scattered all around her, she began to feel a little silly. She wasn’t often the type to indulge in the echoes of bad dreams, to let the fear or the sorrow linger after she woke, but this felt different. It felt so real, almost visceral, and that sensation lingered even as the clarity of consciousness reminded her of how absurd it was.

She couldn’t shake the memory of Kira’s face, that reptilian skin and the heartless obsidian in her eyes. It unnerved her, left her disarmed and disquieted. She knew what Kira had gone through after her kidnapping by the Cardassians; she knew how confused she was, and how frightened, how the experience had shaken her to her very core. And that was understandable; Dax too knew how upsetting it was to think, even for just a moment, that she might not be the person she’d always believed she was. A moment’s doubt could last a dozen lifetimes; Dax knew that far better than most.

Kira knew it now, too, and Dax hated the way it had manifested in her dreams, twisting phantasms that should have been her own into something else. It was the last thing either of them needed, she thought, and felt a wave of guilt pass across the weightier emotions that still lingered. Kira was going through enough self-doubt of her own right now; it was unfair for Dax’s subconscious to lend itself to the same argument, to see that cold Cardassian face that no doubt still haunted Kira’s own dreams.

It was unfair. Dax was Kira’s friend; they had known each other for more than two years now, become as close as any two souls from such different backgrounds could ever hope to be, bonded and connected and come to respect and care for each other. If there was one person on Deep Space Nine who should be able to look Kira in the eye and remind her of who she was and what she stood for, to tell her without the least hint of doubt that she was Kira Nerys, her friend, her Nerys… if there was one person on the whole station who should be able to stand up and remind her of everything that mattered and everything that didn’t, it was Dax.

And maybe that was part of the problem too: Dax did know her, and she knew all too well what she was going through just now. It had felt almost like looking into a mirror, seeing that cold Cardassian stare where Kira’s eyes had once been, like looking deep into that part of her own self she was still so desperately trying to deny. It was like looking at Joran, that piercing cruelty radiating out not from within herself but from Kira instead, taking shape in the one person that should have been safe.

She could still feel the rage inside her, the fire in her veins and the blood pounding in her ears, desperate for somewhere to go, something to destroy, someone to hurt. Though she’d only just woken, still dazed and shaken, she was on fire with adrenaline, panting not with fear but with explosive energy, shaking fingers fisting the sheets, clenching as if in a fever, struggling for purchase, for anything to keep her grounded.

It wasn’t really Kira’s transformation that troubled her at all, she realised as she fought to get her pulse back under some kind of control. Kira’s part in the dream had been jarring in some places, unsettling in others, and somewhat unexpected in still others, but that wasn’t what struck Dax now. It wasn’t what heaved in her chest, what howled in her blood, the slamming of her pulse against her neck, the pounding of her heart against her ribcage, the urgent scream of adrenaline. That wasn’t Kira’s fault, and it hadn’t come from seeing her so transformed.

She couldn’t shake the image of those piercing obsidian eyes, the sound of that cold Cardassian laugh. It wasn’t Kira she’d been seeing there, she realised, or even some twisted Cardassian bastardisation of Kira. The Kira in her dream had died when she’d kissed her, died by getting too close; Dax should have realised that sooner. But she had been right, that lifeless Cardassian Kira; she had been entirely too right when she had pointed at Dax and blamed her for everything. That was what frightened her; that was what set her on edge now, a terrified little girl hiding from a twisted nightmare, afraid of the horrible things her mind was capable of.

The guilt still pressing down on her aching mind as it raced to make sense of it all, the sight of so much destruction wrought so suddenly and so completely, the smell of smoke and ash, the revenant taste of a kiss borrowed or given or stolen, the look on Kira’s face and the strangeness of accusation in the eyes of a soulless Cardassian. All of it, and Dax at the very centre.

_You left me no choice._

She remembered the words, of course. Too well, she remembered them, and it stoked the fire of feeling within her once again just to think of them. His face, his name, his thoughts inside her head, his rage burning in her veins, so seductive, so impossibly potent… _Joran Belar_ , and all the horror that went with him.

Still trembling, she swung out of bed. The covers were too hot and the sheets were too cold, and trying to be still just felt like suffocating anyway; she had to move, had to do something, had to shake off the shadows still throwing themselves around her.

She tried to breathe, slow and steady, deep and clean, tried to calm her lungs if not her blood, tried to quiet her body if not her heart; it was harder than it seemed, though, and as she stumbled half-blind out of the bedroom and into the oversized living space, she found herself having to brace against the wall, leaning heavily as she forced down a violent surge of discomfort that tasted far too much like violence for her liking.

It wasn’t the first time she’d woken like this, sweating and dizzy and reeling from the brutality of dreams that both were and weren’t her own. It wasn’t the first time she had dreamed of destruction, of blood on her hands and death on her conscience. In the couple of weeks since she’d taken in Joran’s twisted memories, integrating his life and his personality as best she could with all the other Dax hosts, it happened almost every night, and it often took more hours than she had to shake off the the lingering effects. The fear was easy, of course; young Jadzia was long accustomed to bad dreams and night terrors. That wasn’t the part she couldn’t shake.

No, it was the rage that took her captive, the hatred she couldn’t shake off. Joran’s rage, and his hatred. His emotions screaming in her head, holding her down until she begged for mercy.

“Computer,” she said, voice still thick and groggy. “What time is it?”

“The time is oh-four-hundred hours,” the computer chirped helpfully.

Dax spat a curse under her breath. Kira had been adamant that they set out for Bajor as early as possible, no doubt afraid that Dax would change her mind if they left it too long, but even so they weren’t due at the docking ring until oh-eight-hundred. That left a rather unfortunate window of four hours, and with the unpleasant dream still lingering, going back to sleep was not an option; after two weeks of them, Dax knew better than to waste her time trying.

On any other day, she would have given the night up as lost and simply wandered up to Ops; better to turn up a few hours early for her shift than pace her quarters feeling restless. She’d done that a few times over the last couple of weeks, sometimes trading out graveyard shifts with one of the yawning young ensigns or helping Chief O’Brien with his duties — like her, the poor chief never seemed to sleep. Thinking about it now, she couldn’t help wondering if perhaps the shift-swapping was one of the reasons why Benjamin and Kira were so adamant about getting her off the station for a while. _“It’s not that we don’t appreciate your initiative, old man,”_ Benjamin had chided at one point, eyes sparkling with good humour, _“it’s just that we can’t keep track of your schedule any more.”_

There would be none of that tonight, though. She was officially on leave for the next two weeks, and not even Benjamin would turn a blind eye if she showed up asking to go on duty now. So then, what was a restless and anxious Trill supposed to do for four hours in the should-be-illegal hours of the night-slash-morning?

Why, kill time (and pre-programmed opponents) in the holosuite, of course.

Naturally, Quark’s was empty by the time she arrived; the bar had been closed for hours, and Dax knew from experience that even the all-hours tongo games tended to wind down and peter out by oh-two-hundred. The Promenade was deserted too as she wandered a well-worn path towards the bar, and she let her gaze wander to the vast starscape twinkling through the windows. It was strange to find such peace and quiet in a setting that was usually so bustling and frenetic, and the tranquillity in such an unexpected place made a pleasant contrast to the restlessness skittering beneath her skin.

Getting access to the holosuites, even at this hour, was simple and straightforward for someone like Dax. Quark trusted her rather more than he should, no doubt because she wasn’t a Ferengi. She was a Starfleet officer, and a female to boot; what could be more trustworthy? Dax, of course, had never bothered correcting him, and it served her well in moments like this. Besides, even if he had known that she’d misuse his trust to break into his bar, they were close enough friends that she knew he wouldn’t begrudge her a little off-hours visit, so long as she didn’t take anything without paying. Knowing him, she supposed, he’d probably encourage it, and not least of all because he knew her big heart well enough to expect an oversized tip out of it. Truthfully, if she really set her mind to it, she could quite easily sneak in and out of the holosuite without a trace, leaving him none the wiser for her impromptu visit, but for all her talents at the Ferengi style of gambling, she was still just a little bit too honest for that.

So, because fair was fair, she made a mental note to leave a few strips of latinum under the bar when she left. There would be no need for a note, of course; he’d know perfectly well who it was from, and why, and she smiled to imagine him shaking his head and chuckling as he pocketed the unexpected profit. Maybe she’d let him win their next game of tongo, too, if she was still feeling amicable by then, but even if she didn’t they both knew that it was more than an even trade for all the times she had turned a blind eye to his wheeling and dealing when she could just as easily turn him over to Odo or Kira or any one of a thousand others who wanted his head. They had an understanding, and she took no shame in using that to her advantage in moments like this.

Once she was inside, however, it was painfully easy to lose track of time.

That was part of the logic behind the holosuites’ inclusion on the station, Dax knew; certainly, it was one of the main reasons why Quark appreciated their business potential so much. Running over a pre-arranged appointment time tended to result in an excessively inflated fine for ‘keeping the next customer waiting’, even when there was no ‘next customer’ to speak of, and Dax herself had been penalised more times than she could count when a favourite adventure ran a little longer than she’d anticipated, or another sucked her in so deep that she forgot to check the time. It was entirely too easy to get caught up in the thrall of virtual reality, to get lost in a fantasy world so expertly crafted in every way that anyone could be forgiven for forgetting that none of it was truly real. That was part of the allure, and also part of the danger.

With four hours to kill, though, she naturally just assumed that this time she’d be safe from that particular pitfall. She had a lot of pent-up aggression to work through, true, and a lot of Joran’s violent influence to burn out, but she also had plenty of time to do it. Not even she was indulgent enough to lose track of time in a holosuite for four straight hours, she thought, and when she commanded the computer to send its highest-level Klingon warriors at her, she naturally presumed that she would wear herself out within the first hour.

Naturally, though, it didn’t turn out that way. Wave after wave of bat’leth-wielding warriors came after her, more and more in each fresh assault, and of course she bested them all. Driven by rage and hate, fury and fervour, by bloodlust and the insatiable need for violence, it was like child’s play, and it didn’t hurt that she was still haunted by the memories of a dream that had cut into her far more cruelly than she’d expected. Over and over again, wave after wave; she drove back everything the simulation threw at her, and more.

The first hour bled quickly into a second, and the second soon faded away into a third, and it wasn’t until the computer chimed in, a hundred or a thousand or a million faceless enemies later, and politely informed her that she was due at Runabout Pad C in ten minutes that she realised she’d whiled away the entire four hours.

Far worse than that, though, was the fact that she was pretty sure she could have easily kept going for four more. She didn’t feel the least bit sated, and she certainly wasn’t tired. Her body ached a little, the pleasant pulse of adrenaline and exercise, but she was not worn down, and she wasn’t ready to leave. She wanted to keep going. Just one more, just a couple more… surely Kira could wait a few minutes?

But that way lay madness, and she knew it. She’d already lost four hours; who was to say how many more would bleed away if she indulged herself for that ever-elusive ‘one more minute’? She was a trained Starfleet officer, and she knew better than to risk such things, as much as she wanted to. Still, though, it was with great difficulty that she told the obnoxiously bleeping computer to end the program.

Her body hummed as she crossed to the door, itching for more, and she closed her eyes. For the first time, she wondered how she would survive on Bajor like this, with no holosuite to keep her temper under control, no imaginary enemies to feed her need for violence. Suddenly she felt very, very frightened. How was she supposed to keep Joran contained without the holosuite to fall back on when she couldn’t hold him down any more? How was she supposed to keep from doing real damage to real people, maybe even to Kira? What was stopping her from turning her horrible, twisted dreams into something real? Put a knife in her hand after two days without a holosuite, and who could tell what she would do with it?

She shuddered, feeling sick, and held her breath as she stepped back out into the real world, with its bright colours and its flesh-and-blood people.

Quark was just opening up as she crept out through the bar. She knew better than to try and sneak past him unnoticed — he had practically made a living out of noticing little details, after all, and Dax was far from a ‘little’ anything — so she opted instead to swagger past as though she owned the place, hoping that he would at least be too tired to notice the tremors in her hands.

Nothing disarmed a Ferengi as quickly or effectively than a female with delusions of authority, and Dax knew perfectly well that she herself was a particular weak spot of Quark’s; she could get away with far worse than taking advantage of his facilities after hours if she wanted to, though they both knew that she would never try. She might have all the cunning of a Ferengi, but she’d never had the lobes for ruthlessness.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on duty, Lieutenant?” he simpered as she stopped to smile at him. “Not that I’d ever turn away a face as lovely as yours…”

Dax chuckled at the empty flattery, letting it warm and soothe the place in her chest that Joran had turned cold and sickly. “If you must know,” she said, “I’m going on vacation with Major Kira.”

Quark blinked his surprise at that little tidbit of information. “Such a shame,” he said, sounding sincerely disappointed. “Business is always slow when you’re not around to liven the place up.”

Dax flashed him another smile, this one a little easier, and cocked her head back in the general direction of the holosuite. “We’re leaving in ten minutes,” she explained, “so I thought I’d squeeze in a last-minute workout.” Letting the smile widen into a conspiratorial grin, the kind she knew he couldn’t resist, she leaned in, letting her sweat-damp skin brush ever so slightly against his oversized ears. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Well…” he stammered, struggling to hold on to his Ferengi dignity. “You know, there’s usually a premium on… ah…” He trailed off, apparently losing his train of thought as she upped the ante, moving in even closer and running a single fingertip along the edge of his lobe. “Well… I suppose… in the interest of good relations with the customers… I suppose we could waive it, just this once…”

Dax beamed, and pulled away. “That’s very sweet of you, Quark,” she purred, as though she hadn’t known from the beginning that she would get her way. “I promise I’ll make it up to you when I get back.”

“Make sure you do,” he mumbled, a half-hearted feint at mending his bruised ego.

The interlude was a brief one, barely worth noting at all, but it helped her to get back in touch with herself, to remember who she was and where she was, that she was more than the sum of Joran’s anger. At the very least, it helped her to reassert some measure of control over the inner conflict still eating away at her insides, the part of her that still wanted nothing more than to turn around and run back into that holosuite where it was safe, where she could kill and kill and kill and nobody would die.

She could still feel his influence now, like a hard-to-reach itch at the back of her mind, but Quark had helped to make it a little more manageable, a little less excruciating and a little more endurable; it was easier to ignore now, and easier to hope, even futilely, that she might yet be able to make it through a few days on Bajor without hurting anyone.

Idly, she found herself wondering what it said about her — or, indeed, about Joran — that a thirty-second feint at sweet-talking a Ferengi into waiving his holosuite fee had been more effective at calming the fury inside her than four solid hours of non-stop brutality and pure violence in the holosuite itself.

Maybe Kira was right, she thought, feeling uneasy. Maybe she could use some time away from the station after all.


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re late.”

Kira, of course, was not late. In fact, judging by the impatient scowl on her face and the irritable tapping of her foot, she’d probably been waiting there for upwards of half an hour. Dax wasn’t that late, really, but Kira was a stickler for punctuality and, like Benjamin, she never turned down an opportunity to give Dax a hard time over her lack of it.

Dax, of course, was never one to back down from a challenge, and she met Kira’s scowl with a good-natured shrug, shifting her bag from one shoulder to the other in the vain hope of making it a little more comfortable.

“I was saying goodbye to Quark,” she said. “He told me to tell you that he’ll miss you terribly.”

“I’m sure he will,” Kira muttered, and rolled her eyes.

She seemed content to let the issue slide with that; Dax supposed she was worried that she’d change her mind and back out if she was antagonised too much. Normally she might have been a little offended, upset that Kira would think she was so flighty, but right now she was just grateful that she wasn’t looking too close, that she hadn’t seen the lines of weariness under her eyes or the haunted shadows that were no doubt still flickering behind them. She didn’t want to hear those questions, and she definitely didn’t want to answer them.

“I wasn’t sure what to pack,” she said quickly, changing the subject with her usual grace and precision, before Kira had a chance to look deeper and see all those things. She shifted the bag back to the first shoulder, then gave up the effort entirely and dumped it unceremoniously on the floor in front of her. “I figured you’d probably want to travel light. I mean, historically speaking, I know these pilgrimages are supposed to be about casting off the material, so…” She shrugged again, feeling self-conscious as Kira smiled. “I didn’t bring very much. I thought you might…”

“Good,” Kira said, interrupting tactlessly, apparently afraid to risk making them any more late than they already were. She gave Dax and her pitiful looking bag an approving once-over, then wrinkled her nose. “You didn’t shower this morning.”

Dax flushed, suddenly aware of the accumulated sweat of four straight hours fighting holographic Klingons. “I didn’t have time,” she admitted, though the excuse sounded weak to her own ears.

Kira glared at her, folding her arms tight across her chest. For a moment, Dax felt very much on display, terrified that if Kira looked hard enough or long enough, she’d see the breakdown beneath, the four hours wasted in the holosuite, the violence and the fury, the tumult she had indulged so completely and still not managed to scratch the surface. She was afraid that she would see it all, that she would realise how close to the edge Dax really was, and refuse to let her come along after all. Dax was not exactly enthused by the idea of spending a fortnight on Bajor with nothing to curb her savage instincts, but being turned away was a humiliation she didn’t think she could stomach.

Besides, if there was one thing last night’s dream made very clear, it was that spending a fortnight anywhere with Kira and her beautiful Bajoran eyes was not something to take for granted.

After a moment, Kira stepped back, snorting her disgust. “‘Saying goodbye to Quark’, my ass,” she huffed. “You overslept again, didn’t you?”

Dax breathed a huge sigh of relief, covering it up quickly with a sheepish smile. Well, she figured, why not? It was better than the truth, after all. “Guilty as charged,” she said.

Kira sighed, heavy and weighted heavier still with equal parts exasperation and amusement. “You’re hopeless,” she grumbled, though her lips were quirking upwards just a little. “Completely hopeless.”

“I’d like to think so,” Dax agreed with a smile that made her jaw hurt, and immediately had to stifle the yawn that threatened to expose her. “But then, I’m not the one wasting precious pilgrimage time by standing around outside an airlock and asking silly questions.” She gave up on the smile, stooping to pick up her bag again and hoping that that would keep Kira from seeing the strain etched on her face. “Do you want to leave the station this century, Major, or would you like to quiz me about my choice of breakfast first?”

“Perish the thought,” Kira shot back with an uncharacteristically sly smile. “I already know the things you like to put in your mouth.”

There was no countering a point like that, and Dax conceded with a hearty laugh. “You know me too well,” she said, shaking her head. “Far, far too well.”

Kira, having made her point, seemed content to board the runabout at last, though she took great pains in tapping her foot and waiting with exaggerated impatience for Dax to hoist the bag back over her shoulder and follow her lead. Dax, for her part, tried very hard not to grimace as her muscles protested every little movement; four hours in a holosuite might be only moderately effectual at silencing the rage of past hosts, but it was rather more brutal on the body.

It was just a few short hours from the station to Bajor, but that was long enough for a disoriented Trill to regain some semblance of self-identity, and Dax was rather looking forward to the task of sitting mindlessly at the helm. Jadzia was far from the most talented helmsman in the galaxy, but she was no slouch at it either, and she’d inherited an appreciation of shuttles and other such things from her previous hosts — Tobin’s fascination with phase coils and engines, in particular, and Torias’s penchant for speed-demon piloting. Between them, they had bred in Jadzia an immense enjoyment of any time she could get in the cockpit. It would be good to indulge their interests for a while, she mused, to take her mind off Joran and his.

For the first hour or so, Kira didn’t talk to her at all. Though she’d made a show of her punctuality, it seemed she hadn’t been nearly as well-organised as she wanted Dax to think, because as soon as they’d cleared Deep Space Nine she sheepishly grabbed a light breakfast from the cockpit replicator. She made a point of not looking at Dax as she ate, nibbling on a modest kava roll and settling comfortably in the co-pilot’s seat. Dax could have happily made a few snide comments about that, but she bit her tongue and focused on flying the ship instead; though it didn’t happen very often, she was not above being the more mature person once in a while.

When she’d finished her breakfast, Kira settled in to meditate. Dax knew better than to try and interrupt, of course, and so she didn’t. There would be time enough for conversation and small-talk in the days to come, she decided, and she had absolutely no intention of seeing their vacation (‘pilgrimage’) get off to a bad start just because she couldn’t sit in silence for a few minutes. She knew how important meditation was to the Bajoran people as a whole, and to Kira in particular, and some lines were simply not meant to be crossed. The limits between them were few and far between — almost anything, within the bounds of common sense, could be a good opportunity for a challenge or a good-natured debate — but some things were sacred, and Kira’s faith was certainly one of them.

So, while Kira sought inner peace or whatever Bajorans sought when they meditated, Dax just sat and quietly watched the stars winking on the viewscreen. She didn’t often get the opportunity to fly at sub-light speeds any more; generally, when she was called to pilot a runabout, it was for a mission into the Gamma Quadrant, or somewhere else that was far enough away to necessitate warp. Bajor wasn’t nearly that far away, and since they weren’t in any hurry to get there the runabout was happy to chug along at impulse. Dax was so used to seeing the stars streaking past at warp speeds, extended lines of light and occasional colour that flickered and flashed and then were lost to the horizon, or else static and stationary pinpricks from the window in her quarters, she’d almost forgotten what they looked like in slow motion. It was a rare luxury to be able to sit there watch a single star or system make its way from one side of the screen to the other, and she enjoyed it while she could.

Idly, she wondered what Kira could possibly be seeking inside her own head when the universe itself was looking in on them from all sides. Didn’t she see how beautiful it was, how vast and unending? How could she be so moved by wormhole aliens and so untouched by the vastness of space? To the scientist in Dax, it seemed like such a shame, a tragic waste of misplaced awe. Still, though, she supposed it was not her place to question. Faith was faith, and it didn’t matter in what; if meditating on the Prophets brought Kira peace, that was good enough for her. The Bajorans had their faith, and Dax had hers. She’d take the soft pulses of starlight over all the false gods in the galaxy, but if the Prophets kept Nerys strong, then who was Dax to argue?

After a long and relatively comfortable silence, Kira opened her eyes. Dax didn’t tear hers away from the viewscreen, but she smiled as she sensed the motion beside her and let her hands drop away from the helm console, fingers tangling around themselves as she lowered them to her lap.

“Welcome back,” she said.

Kira chuckled, a low and husky sound that carried a vague edge of disorientation; she sounded almost as though she’d just been woken. “How long?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Not long,” Dax answered, not bothering to check. “Another couple of hours, give or take. You haven’t missed very much.”

“That’s comforting,” Kira said, standing up.

Dax did turn away from the screen then, turning to watch as Kira stretched out her muscles. She moved like a jungle cat, strong and fierce, but effortlessly graceful, and Dax’s mouth went dry at the sight of her. There really was an ethereal kind of beauty in Kira Nerys, she thought, and inexplicably remembered the part of last night’s dream that hadn’t left her shaking with rage, the part that had left her shaking with other feelings instead… the part that came far more from Jadzia than Joran.

It wasn’t the first time she’d dreamed of Kira’s mouth on hers. To tell the truth, by her usual standards, the brief flicker of lust that had coloured the early part of her dream was practically tame; more often than not, her lips didn’t stay for very long on her mouth at all. There was nothing unusual about that at all, at least not beyond the fact that it hadn’t been the sole focus of the dream this time, and yet something about the momentary remembrance made her skin feel like it was too tight, her lungs like they were not big enough.

Since being joined to Dax, Jadzia had become incredibly self-aware. She was very much in tune with her thoughts and her desires, and those of her previous hosts, and she knew how to deal with unexpected or even unwanted feelings. Most humanoids were self-aware on at least a rudimentary level, but to a joined Trill, it was a matter of necessity to dig far deeper than the basic idea of what she did and did not like; for a joined Trill, any lack of self-awareness in the host meant trouble for its relationship with the symbiont, and that in turn could lead to rejection.

One of the very first things Jadzia had learned as an initiate was how to indulge and embrace the things that made her uncomfortable; physical sexuality were only a part of it, of course, but it was the part that young and shy Jadzia had struggled with most of all. She was a hardworking and studious initiate, but she’d had no real place in the world beyond her desire to be joined, and had definitely not had time to explore her own body, much less anyone else’s. Learning about such things, and on such an intimate and uncensored level as the initiate program had insisted on, felt to her like a kind of torture. She’d been humiliated, and frustrated too because she did not understand. But she had pushed through and persevered, learned to understand herself, the desires of her mind and the desires of her body, because nothing meant more to her than being joined.

Of course, once she finally had what she wanted, she realised just a little too late that her new symbiont’s old host had been an unapologetic and insatiable hedonist. Needless to say, the first few dreams she’d had after being joined were interesting, and considerably more educational than a hundred Commission-taught classes on ‘self-awareness’.

And then there was Kira. Kira Nerys was a strong and attractive woman, and it wasn’t just Curzon’s influence that made Jadzia appreciated those things in her. As confused and disoriented as she had been for much of her first year on the station, struggling to wrap her head around seven new identities (and the same old one she’d always had, which was frankly still struggling with a lot of her own issues), it had been all too easy for the newly-joined Jadzia Dax to latch onto Major Kira, to cling to that fierce Bajoran temper of hers, her fire and her fury. She’d used her as a foothold, a compass guiding her towards the right kind of righteous; she’d let Kira’s unrepentant passion steady her as she dangled off the edge of her own confusion.

Kira cared about things that mattered, things that were important, things that shaped lives. Her life had been a conflagration, and when they came together for the first time on Deep Space Nine, she had hated everything. It was safe to feel for her, safe to know that those feelings would never amount to anything, safe to allow those feelings when the object of them would just as soon shoot her as look at her. It was too easy for young-but-old Jadzia Dax, newly joined and still fighting off Curzon’s illicit thoughts about anything that moved, to focus all of those strange new feelings on the one person she knew would not indulge her.

She couldn’t possibly have anticipated that they would become friends. Not even the old and world-wise Curzon could have anticipated that, and it caught her completely off-guard.

The Kira Nerys who shared a station with her at the end of that exhausting first year was nothing like the Major Kira who had grudgingly welcomed her and Julian Bashir to Deep Space Nine. They were worlds apart, two completely different souls. The Kira who had become Dax’s friend was a softer Kira, a Kira who was slowly coming to realise that the occupation was behind her, that Bajor was free, and that meant she was free as well. It had been inspiring to watch, and Dax had found herself breathless and awestruck more times than she could count to, more so with each new moment where Kira realised something new about herself or her people, about the endless possibilities unravelling before them both. It was beautiful, and as their tentative friendship built itself a more solid foundation, Dax too realised — no doubt with a little help from Curzon — that maybe her illicit feelings weren’t so illicit after all.

After that, she stopped feeling so self-conscious about it. So what if she woke sometimes in the middle of the night, flushed and sweating and on fire with muscle memories of moments she would never experience outside of her imagination? So what if she turned up late to her shift once in a while because her throbbing body demanded that she finish alone what her subconscious mind had started with Kira? Worrying about it wouldn’t stop it from happening, would it? It wouldn’t change her feelings, and it certainly wouldn’t stop the dreams. And surely Kira of all people would understand that a colourful dream or two didn’t negate any of the respect that Dax felt for her as an individual, or how deeply she cherished their friendship.

So, then, if it wasn’t that — if she wasn’t embarrassed about the phantom memories of Kira’s mouth on hers, just one more in an endless stream of similar fantasies — it had to be something else.

Guilt, she decided at last, half-choking on the taste of it. Not over her silly subconscious yearnings, of course, but because of how the dream had ended. The rage itself, she’d tried to temper in the holosuite, and while she hadn’t been entirely successful at least it had taken the edge off the adrenaline. It wasn’t enough, but it was something. But as much as she’d worked at alleviating the most dangerous of her symptoms, she still hadn’t dealt with the guilt.

It was still as fresh in her mind as any of the rest of it, that sense of sick horror, the moment she looked down, vision blurred and hazy, to see her hands stained with blood, the lightning-bolt of dread as she looked around at a Bajor torn apart once more, this time by her own hand. She remembered all too clearly the moment that she realised. She hadn’t known, or even really cared, how or why or what had happened; she hadn’t been aware of anything at all, only that gaping chasm suddenly opening up in her chest as her heart stopped beating, only the world-stopping realisation that it was true, that she was to blame, that it was all her doing.

She watched Kira now as she stretched, watched the grace and beauty, the perfect lines and the arc of her back, so much strength in such a small form. She watched, enraptured, and remembered how it felt to kiss her — no, to be kissed by her — and how it felt, a moment later, to kill her.

“Dax?”

She blinked, swallowing down the flood of emotion, and balled her hands into white-knuckle fists. She squeezed, hard enough to hurt, then folded them safely back in her lap, to keep from looking down and searching for blood. “Hm?”

Kira’s hands were on her hips now, and Dax willed herself not to think about how perfectly it accentuated them, how authoritative she looked, how attractive and how dangerous…

“I asked if you wanted anything from the replicator.”

“Oh.” Dax shook her head, as much to clear it as to decline the offer. “No, thank you. I’m not really very hungry.” The look Kira gave her at that was as close to horror as she’d ever seen from her — _‘you? not hungry?’_ — and so she covered it over with a quick careless shrug. “Anyway, I was saving myself for some real Bajoran-made hasperat.”

Kira smiled, nodding her approval. “That replicated nonsense doesn’t compare,” she said, as though she spent a great many hours thinking about exactly this issue. “I suppose it manages to emulate the flavour well enough, at least to satisfy you silly Starfleet types, but for a Bajoran there’s no substitute for the real thing.”

“I can’t wait to try it,” Dax said, returning her smile.

“You won’t be disappointed,” Kira promised.

Maybe she was right about that. Dax hadn’t really been invested in what she was saying; she’d said the words politely enough, good-natured and well-meaning if not exactly overflowing with conviction, more as a means of stopping Kira from interrogating her than out of any real desire to taste-test home-cooked Bajoran cuisine. Still, once she’d said it she realised that she maybe it wasn’t so far from the truth as she’d thought.

She still wasn’t entirely sold on the idea of ruining a perfectly good vacation with spirituality and soul-searching just to call it a pilgrimage, but Kira was practically glowing already; the damned thing hadn’t even started yet, and she already looked like she’d found all the enlightenment she could wish for. She didn’t get excited very often, Dax knew, and when she did it was infectious. Despite her best efforts to stay distanced and cynical, to roll her eyes every time Kira insisted on using that word — ‘pilgrimage’ — still she couldn’t deny that she felt an echo of Kira’s enthusiasm ringing in her as well.

“Thank you,” she heard herself mumble, as unexpected to herself as to Kira.

Kira blinked. “For what?”

The hot flush that crept up Dax’s neck now had nothing to do with the sight of her stretching or the memory of illicit feelings; suddenly, she felt embarrassed and uncomfortable, acutely aware of her own body, of how tall she was and how awkwardly she fit into the little runabout chair.

“For asking me to come along,” she elucidated, almost apologetic.

Kira looked surprised at that, like it was the last thing she expected to hear. And maybe that was a fair assessment, all things considered; Dax hadn’t exactly been the most enthusiastic companion up to this point, after all. She imagined that Kira had probably even considered collaborating with Benjamin, whispering and plotting behind her back if necessary, forcing her hand and giving her no choice about taking the time off. It hadn’t come to that, of course, but she had no doubt that both of her friends would have been more than willing to go to that extreme if she was stubborn enough.

That was yesterday’s Dax, though, the arrogant and bull-headed Trill who wanted nothing more than to spend her hours safely locked away with imaginary enemies, hiding from the real world and the damage she could wreak on it. Today’s Dax was a lot more sober than that Dax, and the heady cocktail of bad dreams and four hours lost in the holosuite without any of the desired effects had somewhat forced her to at least acknowledge, if not actually accept, a few problems she hadn’t wanted to. She couldn’t solve those particular problems with holograms, she’d learned; if four hours didn’t satisfy Joran’s bloodlust, another four days, or even four weeks surely wouldn’t either.

Besides, pilgrimage or no, and even with that odd uncomfortable feeling still humming in her, she did enjoy Kira’s company.

Kira, for her part, was still watching her, brows knitted into a guarded little half-frown. She seemed genuinely glad that Dax had come around to the idea, that at least on the surface she seemed more willing to embrace the concept of a spiritual retreat, but something in her face said she had her doubts. Dax was hardly the kind of person to stand up and admit she was wrong, even when she was, and she was far too stubborn to concede that maybe Kira had a point in dragging her away from the station for a while. Still, though, experience had taught her not to look too hard at an unexpected gift, and after a moment or two the frown dissolved into a smile. Still guarded and cautious, of course, but a smile nonetheless.

“You’re welcome,” she said, cocking her head to the side as she studied Dax’s face for any hint of what she was really thinking. “You seem a little more upbeat about it today.”

“I feel a little more upbeat about it today,” Dax replied; the words tasted bitter, unfamiliar and dishonest on her tongue, but she didn’t know why.

For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Kira was watching her again, though, scrutinising and gauging in that way she had, the intensity in her eyes that made Dax feel like she was being cut down to the bone; she felt exposed, naked in a way that made her blush and remember other dreams, dreams that had ended far more pleasantly than the previous night’s. This, at least, was familiar territory, and she turned her attention back to the helm console with an unsubtle cough.

It didn’t really help, not that she’d expected it to; she could still feel the weight of Kira’s eyes on her, the heat and the intensity, and just because she wasn’t looking directly at it didn’t mean it couldn’t still burn.

She wished she could read her mind. Kira was so inscrutable so often, and Dax wanted nothing more than to figure out what she was thinking, to read Kira as easily as Kira seemed to read her, to know all the things that she knew. Kira was a mystery of sorts, an open book in one moment and a locked box in the next, and sometimes it felt like a roll of the dice which version of her Dax would get in any given moment. Dax, for her part, wasn’t especially good at being either; more often than not, her feelings would be written all over her face, but the real trouble came when someone tried to get them out of her mouth. Kira stripped her bare, exposed her mind as easily as if she was stripping her body; Dax knew that she had no reason to hide her thoughts or her feelings, but she tried just the same because she’d learned early that old habits died hard.

Benjamin had once told her that Jadzia always wore her heart on her sleeve where Curzon had always clutched his in his fist, and that analogy never felt more accurate than when Kira studied her like this. Sometimes she wished she could be more like Curzon, to channel his cocksure confidence and his swagger, to clutch her heart in her fist like he did; some days, she would have given anything to be just like him, while on others she wished she could shake him off entirely. Sometimes, she wanted nothing more than to counter a curious look with an insult and a swing of her fist, and other times she wished she could cast off his ever-present influence and do things her own way, Jadzia’s way.

Of course, Jadzia’s way tended to involve hiding under the nearest table, closing her eyes, and hoping that nobody would see her. Not very effective against headstrong Starfleet officers, she’d discovered, and even less so against fire-hearted Bajorans. But then, maybe that was why she and Kira were so good for each other. Kira wasn’t afraid to push her when she needed it; she wasn’t afraid to climb under that table too and drag Dax out by force if she thought it was the right thing to do, and nine times out of ten, it was only when she stepped out and blinked at the lights that she realised it was exactly where she needed to be.

Kira was intuitive; she let her reflexes speak for her most of the time, and especially when it came to her friends. Dax supposed that was another bi-product of her time in the Bajoran resistance, forced to think on her feet because there was no other option. If a fellow rebel was crumbling, there wasn’t any time to treat them tenderly or dance around the issue; they were at war, fighting for their lives with every breath and every heartbeat, and they simply didn’t have the resources or the patience to deal with weak souls who cracked under pressure. Kira treated Dax like that too, like she was one of her rebel friends, like a resistance fighter with so much more at stake than living up to imaginary expectations. Dax appreciated that treatment, at least most of the time. It reminded her that some burdens were much heavier than pride.

“So…” Kira murmured after a long moment; she seemed to be thinking out loud, leaning back into her seat and lifting her feet up to rest on her console. “Since you’re feeling so much more upbeat about the whole thing…”

Dax grimaced. She didn’t like the sound of this. “What of it?”

“…do you feel like telling me what you were really doing in the holosuite for all that time?”

Dax bit the inside of her cheek, letting the pain brace her, safely out of sight of those prying Bajoran eyes. She stared pointedly up at the viewscreen, trying to pretend she didn’t feel Kira’s gaze on her, focusing on the throbbing pulse inside her mouth, the sting of her teeth and the dull ache when they released. She still wanted to bite her lip instead, to draw fresh blood and taste it on her tongue, but Kira was staring at her so intently that she didn’t want to risk inviting an interrogation about that as well.

“There’s nothing to tell,” she insisted; she forced her voice to stay light and steady, but she could tell that Kira could hear the tightness in her voice and see right through her. “Klingon workouts, just like you said.”

It was the truth, at least as much of it as Kira needed to know, but she still didn’t seem satisfied. This was a constant conflict in their friendship, how open Kira was when something was bothering her and how closed-off Dax became when it was her turn. Kira had learned from experience, she supposed, that it was more dangerous to keep troubling thoughts inside, lest they rise up and destroy everything at a critical moment; there was too much at stake to risk a bottled-up emotion overflowing at a bad time, and so she’d learned to deal with them as they arose. Dax had never learned that, and maybe she never would.

It wasn’t that she balked at confrontation, at least not really; Daxes thrived on that, even if Jadzia still found it intimidating and scary. It was just that every time she opened her mouth to admit to something, to confess that she was feeling overwhelmed or small, she could hear Curzon and Emony and the rest of them in the back of her mind, shaking their heads and sighing their disappointment. Daxes were many things, she heard them say, but they weren’t weak and they weren’t cowards. She knew that Kira would never judge her — rather the contrary, she imagined she’d probably think more of her if she took the plunge and let herself open up a little once in a while — but she couldn’t say the same about her former hosts, and they were a whole lot harder to ignore than a shoulder-height Bajoran. Even one as persistent as Kira.

Kira sighed. For a moment or two, she didn’t say anything, and Dax wondered if she was trying to decide whether there would be any point. She knew perfectly well how difficult Dax could be when she didn’t want to talk about something, but Dax didn’t think for a moment that would be enough to stop her.

She found herself wondering if maybe Kira felt the same pull as she did, drawn as much to the way they challenged each other as the way they complemented each other. Dax wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with, for a broad spectrum of reasons; she knew that perfectly well, and she wondered if Kira pushed her so readily because she too enjoyed the challenge of finding new ways to break through old walls. Kira wasn’t one to rest on her laurels, Dax knew; she did not take kindly to idleness, in herself or in anyone else, and if there was one thing Dax could say about herself with any confidence, it was that she was never idle; even at her most stubborn, at least she worked for it.

After a brief silence, Kira finally settled on a fresh approach. “You know,” she mused thoughtfully, taking on a reflective quietude that Dax recognised all too well. “I’m not entirely sure I would have survived in that place without Ghemor.”

She turned her face away, retreating inwards, and Dax took her turn to watch her. She thought about saying something, even just making a sound, something to show that she was listening and attentive, but she was afraid of shattering the moment, of bringing Kira back to the present and out of her moment. She knew too well how precious and precarious moments like this were, when Kira lost herself to reflection and contemplation, and she always felt blessed to be a witness to them. So, instead, she just sat quietly, watching in wordless wonder as Kira sighed deeply and pressed on.

“I mean…” She sighed again, shaking her head. “I’m not stupid. I know that’s why they chose me… because I looked like his daughter, because they wanted him to feel connected to me. I know it was part of their plan that he took to me like he did, that he tried to protect me and take care of me and…” She trailed off. “I know it wasn’t really about me at all. I know it was all about baiting him. I know all of that… but if he hadn’t been the man he was… if he hadn’t looked at me like he did… like a _father_ …” She exhaled, shaky. “He wasn’t. I know that, too. He wasn’t my father any more than I was his daughter. But the way he acted… the way he treated me…” She closed her eyes, and Dax bit down on her lip. “I think, by the end, I wanted to believe he really was my father nearly as much as he wanted to believe I was his daughter.”

“That’s understandable,” Dax said gently. “You were in a terrible situation, and he treated you kindly. It’s natural that you’d…”

“I know,” Kira interrupted, a little sharply, then softened. “I mean, I know why I felt like I did. But part of me still felt like it was a betrayal. He was still a Cardassian, still one of them. It shouldn’t have mattered how he treated me. It shouldn’t have mattered what he did. I shouldn’t have felt anything for him at all. I shouldn’t have…” She looked so anguished, it was by pure reflex that Dax reached out to take her hand. “But I did. He was so honest, so desperate to keep me from hurting. He was so kind. Can you imagine a kind Cardassian?” She was talking to herself, Dax knew, so she didn’t answer. “He made it so easy to care about him. He made it so easy to… to…”

“…to confide in him,” Dax finished softly, trying to help.

“Yes,” Kira said, grateful. “And in the end, that’s what kept me alive. It kept me grounded. Even when they were so close to… even when I really thought they might break me…” Her voice was thick now, rich and low with sorrow, and Dax respected her personal space by turning away. “I felt like I could trust him. Even before I realised what was really going on… even before I knew it wasn’t me they were after… even before I knew that it was him… the whole time, it was all him… even before all of that, I felt like I could trust him.”

“Trust is a wonderful thing,” Dax offered, with a sad smile of her own. She turned back, letting Kira see the emotion on her face, how deep her feelings ran. “I know how hard it is for you to trust anyone.”

“It’s getting easier,” Kira admitted thoughtfully. “I didn’t even realise it was until…” She shook her head. “A year ago, I would never have trusted him. Even if he’d jumped right into the path of a phaser for me, I still don’t think I would have trusted him.”

Dax swallowed. She felt so proud, so unfathomably proud. She wanted to cry, to lay her head down on the helm console and weep for all the changes in this woman, her friend, the angry militant Bajoran who just two short years ago had hated everyone and everything, who had been kidnapped and tormented by the very people who had spawned all that hate in the first place… this remarkable woman who could suffer once more under the hands of her worst enemies, and yet somehow come back from that ordeal with more love in her heart than hate. It was unspeakably, impossibly beautiful, and the tears that stung behind Dax’s eyes felt beautiful too.

Suddenly, she was painfully aware of Joran. The anger and the violence still seethed within her, even now, even in this moment of such precious beauty; she could still feel it, still trembled as it threatened to rise up and drown her, to take away all the beauty and the wonder, the pride and the positivity, the love she felt as she looked at Kira, to take it all away and leave her barren, a bone-littered desert of anger and brutality. It took every ounce of strength she had to drive it back, to swallow it down, to push past it and remember that she was more than the sum of any one host, and certainly more than the sum of him. It took everything she had in her, and when it was finally over, she felt incredibly tired. She felt like she had been through yet another four-hour marathon in the holosuite, another army of holographic Klingons dead at her feet. She was exhausted, worn out and weary, and deeply ashamed.

“Nerys,” she whispered. The name tasted like a prayer on her tongue, like a pilgrimage, spiritual and holy.

Kira leaned in, one hand resting lightly on Dax’s shoulder. Dax recoiled at the look on her face, the sudden earnestness that said she was turning this around, reshaping her own struggles to reflect back on Dax’s, crawling under that damn table and hauling her back out into the light. It was a look that said _‘if you don’t stop nursing your ego and talk to me about this, you’ll live to regret it’_. And she was right about that; Dax knew from repeated experience that she would.

“Did I ever apologise?” she asked, blurting it out without even thinking, fumbling to deflect the inevitable. The question came seemingly out of nowhere, and if the puzzlement on Kira’s face was anything to go by she might as well have asked it in Klingon for all the comprehension she got.

“For what?” Kira asked, and that earnest look crumpled into a frown.

Dax took a steadying breath, chewing her tongue. “You know… for when I… when you… when I thought you were… I mean, when I said…” She threw up her hands, feeling clumsy and helpless.

“Could you be a bit more specific?” Kira pressed. “You say a lot of things, and most of them warrant apologies.”

Dax swallowed, forced her spine to straighten. “A couple of weeks ago. When I was… not well…”

That was an understatement, she thought, though Kira seemed to know exactly what she meant. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to quash the memories of confusion, of feeling all that anger and not knowing why, of those terrible days before she knew who Joran was or where all her newfound rage was coming from. ‘Not well’; it seemed like such an futile word next to the reality of it, but she couldn’t phrase it any more accurately. Everything was still so raw, and her chest ached with shame and discomfort, the humiliation of all the terrible things she’d said to all her friends, to Benjamin and to Kira, who had only been concerned, who had only wanted to help.

“I remember,” Kira said, giving away nothing with her voice.

“I know you were worried,” Dax elucidated, unprompted. “And I’m sorry that I snapped at you.”

“You did a little more than ‘snap at me’,” Kira replied; her voice was still even and steady, but she couldn’t quite mask the hint of hurt. “You threatened me. Unless you’ve forgotten that part.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Dax said, hanging her head; part of her wished she had. “I’m sorry for that too.”

For a moment, Kira looked like she wanted to push her, to force Dax to look inward and see where the apology came from, to bring out the shame in her, to bring out anything that might force her to voice aloud the thing she was hiding from. She didn’t, though, seeming to realise that this wasn’t the way to handle it, and instead opted to shrug the whole thing aside.

“You know you don’t need to apologise,” she said, shaking her head. “You weren’t yourself.”

“No, I wasn’t.” Dax took a deep breath, trying to calm the tide rising inside her. The thought that followed surprised her, but the look on Kira’s face, hurt giving way to empathy, touched a nerve that flinched before she had a chance to stop it, and before she knew what she was doing, she had already blurted out the words. “And I kind of feel like I’m still not.”

She forced herself to look into Kira’s eyes, to meet the steadiness of her gaze and open herself up to that damned soul-baring scrutiny. It was harder than she thought it would be, and she found herself suddenly struggling not to remember how those beautiful Bajoran eyes looked through the frozen obsidian lens of a Cardassian face, how her precious Bajor looked after it was torn asunder, how the blood looked and felt as it soaked through her hands. She struggled not to remember how Kira’s mouth had tasted, how her body had felt pressed against her, how easy it had been to lose herself in the moment, to drown in it and drown out everything else. She struggled so hard not to remember any of it, not to remember anything, but the harder she tried the more vivid it all got, and suddenly all she could see when she looked in Kira’s eyes was her own darkness reflected back at her.

Kira sighed, soft and sympathetic, the remorse of someone who wished she could understand better than she did. “You got seven lifetimes thrown at you when you were joined,” she mused, as though she was trying to remind herself, not Dax. “What difference is one more?”

“It’s not that,” Dax said, but it was hard to articulate. “It’s not about having another lifetime’s worth of memories. It’s not about having a whole new personality to assimilate. It’s not about that at all.” Kira looked even more confused, and a little frustrated, so Dax took a deep breath and tried to make it as clear as possible. “It’s who he was, Nerys. It’s what he did, and what he felt when he did it.”

Kira looked thoughtful. “He was a murderer, right?”

“He was.” Dax closed her eyes, allowed herself a shudder as she remembered all too vividly. “He did unspeakable things. He thought and felt and did unspeakable things… terrible, terrible things. He was a terrible person, Nerys, and sometimes I still feel…”

Unable to resist the temptation a moment longer, she bit down on her lip, hard enough to draw the blood she craved so desperately, relishing the taste and hating herself for it. Blood, pain, destruction, so much of Joran and so little of Jadzia.

How could she explain? How could Kira possibly hope to understand how it felt to suddenly revel in all the things that were supposed to sicken her, to draw joy from sorrow, pleasure from pain, delight from suffering? How could she hope to understand the urge to do terrible things, the spark of excitement even just to think of them? How could Kira hope to understand how it felt to be so twisted, so deranged and dangerous, to be so unlike herself and yet somehow still feel as though she wasn’t unlike herself at all? How could anyone hope to understand, truly understand, how it felt to be someone like that?

“I guess I’ve just not processed it all,” she finished at last, frustrated and angry that that was all she could say.

Kira smiled again. “This trip will help you,” she said, sounding so certain that Dax couldn’t help believing her just a little. “That’s what these pilgrimages are for. To give you a shelter from your conflicts, and help you find some inner peace.”

Dax frowned at that, unconvinced. She opened her mouth to argue, to point out for the hundredth time that she wasn’t Bajoran and she didn’t believe in the Prophets, but before she had the chance to say anything, Kira’s whole face transformed, reshaping itself into something new, something bright and breathtaking, her whole essence alight with faith, soft and lit up with so many things that Dax would never know.

“You don’t have to be religious to be spiritual,” she added, very quietly. “And you don’t have to believe in the Prophets to be helped by them.”

“I’m not sure I can get what I need from the Prophets.”

The admission came hard, and not least of all because she knew how highly Kira thought of them; the last thing she wanted was to offend her, but she simply didn’t have the faith that Kira had. It didn’t seem to deter her, though, because that breathtaking smile never left her face, and her hands were impossibly gentle as she took Dax’s.

“It’s all right if you don’t,” she said, though Dax could tell she didn’t really believe that. “You don’t have to come out of this completely whole. But don’t turn away from it just because it’s something different to what you think you know.”

“I won’t,” Dax promised, then sighed. “It’s just… there’s no training for this. Symbionts aren’t supposed to be given to unsuitable hosts. Ever. There’s no reason we should ever need to know how to deal with…” She braced against the helm, biting more blood from her lip, and grimaced when she saw that Kira was watching. “This was never meant to happen,” she said at last. “I don’t know how to…”

“I know,” Kira murmured. Her fingers tightened just a little, still wrapped so tenderly around Dax’s own, and Dax forced down the sudden urge to break them all. She must have turned pale, shaken by the feeling, because Kira took her hands back pretty quickly, and leaned back as well to give her a little more space. “But you will. You don’t need to know everything right away, Jadzia, just so long as you get there in the end.” She smiled again, a little ruefully this time. “Take it from someone who’s spent the last two years learning how to do things she never even dreamed possible.”

Dax found herself choking on something that felt dangerously close to a sob. “You’re so much stronger than I am,” she breathed, before she could stop herself.

“That’s an excuse,” Kira retorted, eyes hardening to stone. “And a bad one.”

Dax knew that, and she conceded by bowing her head. She hated that they were talking about this, hated that she’d admitted even what little she had. She hated herself for still feeling like this, a slave to the clenching of her fists and the intoxicating taste of blood in her mouth, to hours lost in the holosuites, to the memories of dreams that shouldn’t still be haunting her like this and to the existence of those dreams in the first place. She hated herself. She hated the way Kira was looking at her, with all the faith of a thousand Bajoran temples, the Prophets themselves radiating out from behind her eyes. Dax hated the Prophets. She hated Kira’s faith. She hated everything.

She _hated_.

Apparently sensing the struggle rising in her, Kira slid out of her chair and onto the floor, sliding forward until she was pressed against the edge of Dax’s chair, crouched beside her. Then, though she must know how close Dax was to losing control, she took her hands once more, light and gentle and so tender it hurt.

“Dax,” she said, voice low but urgent. “Look at me.”

Against her will, Dax did. “Kira…”

“And listen,” Kira pressed, ignoring her. “I’ve done unspeakable things too. I’ve had unspeakable thoughts and felt unspeakable emotions, and all the rest of it. I’ve committed acts of violence so terrible that even your murderer would think twice. I have been a killer and a terrorist, and a thousand other things as well. My whole life was defined by violence, Dax. Everything I did, everything I thought, everything I felt. Every bone in my body was made up of hate and rage and violence.”

Dax didn’t need to see the tears in her eyes to know how deeply this was hurting her too, and she hated herself all the more for forcing her to say it, for dragging those words out of her, for dragging the memories out too. She hated that Kira was suffering, and she hated the heat pooling inside of her, the part of her that she was struggling to force down rising up in spite of herself to enjoy Kira’s mnemonic pain, to take twisted pleasure in someone else’s suffering. She felt sordid and perverse, and she felt sick.

“I…” she started, but couldn’t say anything more. All of her strength was lost on trying not to explode.

Kira, of course, continued to ignore her. “I’ve been a terrible person too,” she went on, voice getting louder as the passion took hold. “There are few things I wouldn’t do to a Cardassian, given half a chance. Things you can’t imagine, things you don’t want to imagine. Things even I don’t want to imagine. I hated them so much, Dax. I hated them with everything I had, everything I was. All my life I let that hate define me. All my life, it was the only thing I knew, the only thing I trusted, the thing that got me up in the morning and let me sleep at night. It was the only thing there was. For so many of us, it was the only thing in the whole galaxy. Hate for the monsters who had done this to us. _Hate_ , Jadzia, and so much of it.”

She took a breath, squeezed Dax’s hands, and closed her eyes. Dax tried again to speak, but her mouth wouldn’t move.

After a very long moment, Kira pressed on once more. “And then… and then, three years after it was all over… three years after it should have been over… one of those monsters risked his life to keep me safe.” Her breath caught, and Dax felt her heart crack. “He risked everything, because he couldn’t bear to see me hurt. Because he thought I was his daughter… because, even when he realised I wasn’t, he knew that I didn’t deserve what they were trying to do to me… because he…” She trailed off, choked by emotion. “Because he cared. And I… I looked into his eyes, and I saw how much he was hurting, how much he cared… and I cared too. I didn’t care that he was a Cardassian. I didn’t care that he was one of them, that he was just as responsible for the occupation as any of the rest of them, that he’d probably slaughtered countless Bajorans in his life. I didn’t care about any of that. I just _cared_.”

Dax couldn’t breath. “Nerys…”

“Don’t.” Her eyes were damp when she looked up, and Dax felt tears pricking behind her own as well. “Don’t talk. Just listen to me. And listen well, because I’m telling you this as your friend, but also as someone who has actually lived through the things you’re only remembering through someone else. Listen to me, and believe me. If I can survive all of that… if I can move past it and come out the other side… if I can take a lifetime’s worth of hate and rage and violence and turn it into something good… then so can you.”

The depthless faith in her voice wasn’t directed at the Prophets this time; it was aimed right at Dax, like even the Prophets bowed their heads next to this moment, and it struck as hard as a blow. Dax could only sit there, breathless and speechless and utterly beyond words.

Even if she did have something to say in response to all of that, even if she could somehow have summoned some retaliation, some reaction, some way of expressing the countless things she was feeling… even if she had the words, the capacity for speech seemed to have abandoned her completely. The rage was gone as well, at least for the time being, leaving in its wake a sense of numb disbelief, countless thoughts and feelings churning like nausea within her as she stared down at Kira, at those bright Bajoran eyes gone suddenly dark with her own haunted memories.

There was no trace of that cold Cardassian onyx in her now, no trace of anything that had been so present in her dream, no scales or ridges or black-edged blame. There was nothing at all, just Kira… just _Nerys_ , raw and open and exposing herself completely for Dax to see and learn. Nerys, challenging her like she always did, being the bigger person, the better person, the stronger person. Nerys, showing Dax all the things she should strive to be, all the things she had worked so hard to become herself. Nerys, who was so much, and Dax, with eight lifetimes and no chance of ever being even half of it.

“Kira,” she said again, voice thick, and before she knew what she was doing, she was sliding out of her chair too, kneeling awkwardly in front of Kira, taking her face in her hands, looking deep into her eyes until they were all she could see, all she wanted to see, all there was…

“There are other ways,” Kira murmured, reciprocal as Dax leaned in. “There are other ways to channel your anger, Jadzia. You don’t have to lock yourself in the holosuite.”

Dax closed her eyes, turned to press her face against the warm skin at the base of Kira’s neck, grounded herself in the scent of sweat and sugar, of kava rolls and unending faith.

“I can’t control myself,” she whispered, a confession that came with great difficulty, and cost her everything she had.

“Yes, you can.” One hand was in her hair, thin fingertips trailing through the fine strands, and the other rested at the small of her back. “You’re the most controlled person I’ve ever met. You’re strong and you’re stubborn, and sometimes you’re utterly impossible. But you have always been controlled.” Her body shifted as she smiled. “You were so patient with me when we first met. I tried so hard to antagonise you, do you remember?”

Dax laughed, the sound lost to Kira’s skin. “I remember.”

“But you wouldn’t let me. You never let me get to you.” She sighed, limber body pressing against Dax’s. “You were so stubborn. You refused to let me win.” 

“I never back down from a challenge,” Dax agreed softly.

“Exactly.” Kira shifted, but didn’t try to pull Dax’s face away from her throat. “And you don’t need to back down from this one. You don’t need to be afraid of yourself, Dax. And you don’t need to hide behind holograms.” Her lips were warm against Dax’s temples. “You just need to find a little faith.”

The raw conviction in her words voice left Dax reeling. Suddenly, she understood what Kira had been talking about all this time, why it was so important to her that Dax come with on this damned pilgrimage. She wanted her to share her faith, yes, but not in the Prophets; she wanted Dax to see the faith that she had in her, the faith she’d once had in herself. She wanted her to recapture the faith she’d lost, the faith that had been cut away and replaced with violent tendencies and twisted dreams, the faith that fell a little further out of reach every time she lost her temper or felt the swell of excitement ignite in her blood. 

It was humbling, and Dax tilted her face upwards, looked deep into Kira’s eyes, those eyes that had seen so much, and wondered what it was like to feel that kind of faith, to know that nothing could ever cut it away.

“Nerys…”

Kira smiled, breath warm against her brow. “Jadzia.”

There was more to the name than just a response, and Dax knew it; again, Kira was reminding her of who she was, who she had always been and who she would always be. A name, an identity, a memory. _Jadzia_ , with or without Dax.

“Thank you,” she whispered, but it was not enough.

Kira let her fingertips trail down from her hair, featherlight touches tracing the line of spots that ran from her temple to her jaw and beyond, tentative touches that left Dax’s skin tingling and hyper-sensitive. Her breath caught again in her throat, a low hitching gasp, and before she even realised she was doing it, she found that she was covering Kira’s hand with her own, holding her in place and leaning up, close enough to see all the colours behind her eyes, so far from that unwanted Cardassian obsidian… close enough to taste her breath, to feel the warmth of her skin, heat rising as she blushed, as they both blushed. Close enough to drown in her, close enough that it wouldn’t take much at all to push through what small space was left between them, to lean in just a little further, to breathe in just a little deeper, to—

“Dax.”

“I know,” she said, but didn’t pull back. “I know…”

Kira’s fingertips trembled against her jaw; her lips, so close to Dax’s own, trembled too. They were both trembling, skin almost touching, so close, so—

“Dax,” she said again, a warning weakened by hope.

Dax closed her eyes. “Nerys, I…”

But she never got a chance to finish the sentence, or the sentiment that went with it. The moment, such as it was, was shattered in an instant as the console above them began to beep, a klaxon-loud warning overshadowed just a moment later by the unexpected hum of a transporter beam-in.

Flushed and stammering, Dax scrambled to her feet. Kira, of course, was quicker off the mark, back to business in less than the time it took Dax to remember how to breathe, and by the time Dax had regained some semblance of her balance, she was already halfway to the rear of the cockpit, reaching the transporter in two large strides. 

She was too late to do anything about it, though. Already, the flickering sparkles were taking on a humanoid form, energy residue turning to solid matter, to a person, almost immediately, and there was nothing either of them could do to stop it now. Dax blinked as the energy sparkles began to dissolve, dazed and thrown by the unexpectedness of it all, and found herself wish that she hadn’t been so quick to shed her Starfleet uniform and the trusty phaser that went with it.

They were both facing the transporter pad, so Dax couldn’t see Kira’s face, but she heard the curse she snarled out through clenched teeth, and she heard the ferocity in her voice, less of a warning and more of a threat. She took another step forward, coming to a stop at Kira’s back, fists balled protectively, squinting past her as the last lingering traces of the transporter energy dissolved, and their unexpected guest stepped down from the platform.

Kira swore again, louder. Dax, for her part, could only gape.

“ _Benjamin_?”


	4. Chapter 4

“What the hell are you doing here?”

It took Dax a moment to reconcile the impossibility of what she was seeing with the fact that it was actually happening. Unlikely as it was, the man standing before her was most definitely Benjamin Sisko, and she breathed a huge sigh of relief as she drank in the sight of him.

He was dressed in civilian clothes just as they were, a strange look on his face, and if Dax hadn’t been so weak-kneed as the panic-induced adrenaline flooded out of her, she might have noticed a difference in the way he held himself, the uncharacteristic gleam in his eye or the thinly-veiled threat in his smile. At the very least, she might have allowed herself the luxury of wondering where he could possibly have beamed in from, much less why he would have done so without contacting them first. She might have been a little quicker on her feet, might have seen the signs before they were pointed out to her… but of course she wasn’t.

The young woman in her was was still reeling from her sort-of not-quite moment with Kira, while the seasoned Starfleet officer was still ricocheting from the anticipation of potential invasion (was it the Jem’Hadar? had they accidentally gone through the wormhole and ended up in the Gamma Quadrant? did space pirates exist in this sector?). In brief, she just wasn’t at her best. Who could blame her for being a little slow, given the circumstances? Who could blame her for seeing what she wanted to, for seeing what was in front of her instead of using her finely-honed instincts to dig a little deeper?

Apparently Kira could, and her whole body was taut with tension as she threw out an arm to hold Dax back, keeping her securely behind her. “Don’t move,” she ordered, voice tight and authoritative, every inch the military first officer that Dax knew, so much so that it came as second nature for her to obey. “He’s not Sisko.”

Benjamin — or apparently not Benjamin, if Kira was to be believed — let out a laugh. It was wild and unrestrained, genuine amusement tangled up in a thread of danger. It was like nothing Dax had ever heard before, and certainly nothing she’d ever heard from her friend Benjamin, and it was all the evidence she needed to to realise that Kira was right. Whatever her eyes might be telling her, she knew without a doubt that the man who stood before them now was not her friend.

“Oh the contrary, _Major_ …” The man who would be Benjamin was leering at Kira like she was meat on a skewer, spitting her title like it was a curse, and that alone was enough to get Dax’s blood up too. “That’s exactly who I am.”

Well, judging by his outward appearance, Dax supposed she could be forgiven for thinking that was true. Though he held himself completely differently, a closer inspection revealing a wildness that she had never seen in anyone bearing the name Benjamin Sisko, his face remained the same. Underneath the obvious savagery, the unhinged glint in his eye, the look of someone starved for everything and attention most of all, there was still a shadow of recognition, a ghost of the uncut young man that Curzon Dax had taken under his wing all those years ago. He was dressed strangely, dark clothing with the fabric all torn and stained, and he carried a very rough approximation of a phaser, primitive but functional. It wasn’t the sort of attire she would have pictured Benjamin wearing, at least not by choice, but the lines of his face did not lie.

Kira, it seemed, wasn’t fooled even for an instant. Evidence alone wasn’t enough to make her drop her guard, and she remained as tense and sober as Dax had ever seen her. Though her eyes were narrowed with suspicion, there wasn’t a hint of confusion in any part of her; in fact, she looked as though she understood the situation perfectly well, as though she knew exactly who they were looking at and exactly what was going on.

Dax, for her part, was completely and utterly baffled, and she wasn’t ashamed to show it. “Kira,” she hissed, though she wasn’t quite sure what she hoped to accomplish by whispering; there wasn’t enough room in the cramped cockpit for a quiet aside anyway, even if she had been able to get her voice low enough. “Would you mind explaining what’s going on here?”

“I’m not the one who needs to explain anything,” Kira snarled back, not bothering to even try and lower her voice in return.

Not taking her eyes off him for a second, she took a single step forwards, a warning shrouded in a challenge. Her movements were slow and deliberate, and though she had no weapon there was no doubt in any of their minds that she was the more dangerous of the two. Dax pushed her bewilderment to one side, willing herself to channel her Starfleet training and make herself useful; she kept close, shadowing Kira’s movements carefully and never letting herself get more than half a step behind. It was more of a precaution than a necessity; she knew perfectly well that Kira could handle the situation all by herself, but experience had taught her that it paid to keep close, just in case things got messy.

“What are you doing here?” Kira demanded, taking another step forwards. “Aren’t you supposed to be in another universe?”

_Oh._

“He’s that Sisko?” Dax blurted out, the words spilling from her mouth before she could stop them. “The one you and Julian met when you—”

“Yes,” Kira interrupted, still not looking away from her target. “That Sisko. And he’s dangerous, so be on your guard.”

The Sisko who apparently wasn’t Benjamin giggled at the accusation. It was a deranged, manic sort of laugh, the deranged hysteria of someone clutching at the frayed edges of their sanity, and it sent a chill down Dax’s spine to hear it. This was definitely no Benjamin Sisko that she’d ever met, and as she waited for the laughter to subside, she found herself growing more and more uncomfortable. Frightened, almost, though the idea was absurd; he may be the only one of them with a weapon, but she and Kira were two and they had the home team advantage to boot.

“I’m flattered you think so, Major,” he quipped when he finally finished giggling. “If only the Intendant was as easy to win over…”

Kira growled at that. “Don’t you dare say that name around me.”

It took Dax a moment or two to figure out what was going on, why Kira was so angry, who the ‘Intendant’ was. When she did remember, of course, Kira’s belligerence made entirely too much sense; that was the title of her counterpart, a tyrannical mirror image that Kira had described in her mission report as a ‘cold-blooded narcissist’ and ‘unfit to carry the name Kira Nerys’, among other more colourful descriptions. Dax had found it all pretty funny at the time, and had even joked once or twice about the art of self-love (much to Kira’s disgust and annoyance), but now that she was faced with a flesh-and-blood revenant from that universe, looking into a face so identical to the man she knew so well and yet somehow fundamentally different in every possible way… well, suddenly it wasn’t nearly so funny any more. In fact it was downright unnerving.

“Isn’t he the one who helped you escape?” she whispered to Kira, still trying to keep her voice low. “He doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

Sisko-but-not-Benjamin laughed again at that, loud and raucous but blessedly less extensively this time. “You hear that?” he cried. “I don’t sound so bad to her!”

Dax wasn’t entirely sure what was so amusing about that, but she knew better than to ask. Kira seemed to know the strange new terrain a whole lot better than she did, and Dax had been a Starfleet officer for long enough by now to know when to sit down, shut up and let someone else take the reins. Besides, given everything that Kira and Bashir had said in their reports, Dax supposed she couldn’t blame the major for being a little bit unsettled right now. To say nothing of the fact that they’d just been boarded without permission, of course.

“What are you doing here?” Kira demanded again, louder and more aggressively. “What do you want from me?”

“From you?” the strange new Sisko echoed, as though that was the funniest thing he’d heard all year (which, considering the way he seemed to find everything anyone said absolutely hilarious, was probably quite the achievement). “Why, I don’t want a damn thing from you. You got me in enough trouble last time, ‘Major’, and I have no intention of making that mistake a second time.”

“Then what do you want?” Kira pressed him, still somewhat dubious. “If you’re not here for me, why are you here?”

He stared at her for a long moment, like he was waiting for her to wise up and figure it out for herself, like they all had the luxury of standing around and waiting for answers to fall down from the depths of space. When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to play his game, that she wanted to hear the words from his mouth, he shrugged and spread his arms out wide.

“Why, for _her_ , of course!”

It took Dax an embarrassingly long moment to realise that there was only one other person on board the runabout. “Me?”

“Oh, she’s a quick one,” he said, giving her an appraising look and shooting her another of his feral grins before promptly turning back Kira. “Truth be told, Major, I was hoping to find you in company with that delightful doctor friend of yours. We could sure as hell use his so-called ‘expertise’ where we’re going.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Kira said flatly, her tone making it clear that this was not up for negotiation.

Sisko rolled his eyes. “We’ll see about that, Major.” He cut another glance at Dax, letting out a low whistle. “Like I was saying… as happenstance would have it…” He shrugged again, looking strangely philosophical for a moment, then barked another laugh and slapped his thigh, looking positively delighted. “Well, it looks like fate has a sense of humour, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know…” Dax said, feeling discomfited.

He looked at her, long and hard. “I would.”

That said, he took a swaggering step forwards, until he was standing almost toe-to-toe with Kira. She stood her ground, of course, blocking his path as best she could, but it seemed that he was done with her now, and unceremoniously shoved her out of the way in his haste to get to Dax.

Naturally, Kira punched him for that, reeling around and lunging at him, but he shrugged the blow off as though it were nothing at all, and kept right on coming. Dax took a wary step back; she wasn’t afraid, exactly, but she couldn’t deny being somewhat unsettled by the villainy she saw reflected in the eyes of a man she had only known as good and honest for more than twenty years.

She didn’t let him see her discomfort, of course, but there was no shame in being cautious, and she could feel the grudging approval from Kira when she danced back another step or two as he continued his relentless approach. _Good_ , she heard in the space between their breathing. _Don’t underestimate this one. You’ll regret it if you do._

“What do you want from me?” she asked, forcing herself to sound affronted instead of uneasy. “I’ve never been to your universe. I wouldn’t know the first thing about—”

“It doesn’t matter what he wants,” Kira interjected, stepping back around to put herself between Dax and this strange sinister-looking Sisko. “Because whatever it is, he can forget it.”

“Oh, I was hoping you’d say that,” he purred, stopping to shoot her another of those volatile grins. “You see, I can’t really do anything to the Intendant right now; she’s got all her bodyguards and servants and that odious little Cardassian henchman of hers, and… well, it’s understandable, I suppose. Can’t be too careful with all those _rebels_ running around…” He leaned right in, teeth flashing again to show off all the danger that Kira had warned about. “But you don’t have a posse of protectors bowing down to your every whim, do you? As far as I recall, you don’t have anyone at all. Isn’t that why you needed my humble services when you were the honoured guest in my universe?”

Dax blinked at that, and Kira bristled. “Well, we’re not on your playground this time,” she pointed out angrily. “We’re on mine. And I’m not as generous a host as your Prophets-forsaken Intendant.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call this a ‘playground’,” Dax remarked, trying in her usual way to leaven the moment, but they both ignored her. That didn’t really seem very fair, considering she was the one being bargained for, so she crossed her arms and jostled her way back in front of Kira. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

“No,” Kira snapped; the outburst was reflexive, but she softened when she remembered that it was Dax and not Sisko who had asked the question. “Don’t listen to him, Lieutenant.”

The use of her rank was deliberate, Dax could tell, a subtle little reminder of who she was: a Starfleet officer with responsibilities even when she was out of uniform. After the last crossover, the unfortunate incarceration of Kira and Julian Bashir, it didn’t take a genius to know that ‘proceed with caution’ was the way to go when dealing with the other universe. Kira was reminding her, without having to actually say the words, that it was not her place to meddle with things like this, that she shouldn’t even be listening to this broken reflection of Benjamin Sisko in the first place. Unless he actually planned on using that weapon of his, neither of them should even be talking to him at all.

She was right about that, and Dax knew it. But she was a Trill as well as a Starfleet officer, a Trill with half a dozen excessively curious lives under her belt, and it wasn’t as easy for her to play the safe road as it was for someone like Kira. Dax may have a responsibility to Starfleet, but she had a responsibility to the symbiont as well — the more experiences a host could accumulate, the better — and it was just as difficult for her to turn away from that as it was to turn away from what her Starfleet training had taught her was proper procedure.

It was the symbiont who won out in the end, Curzon and Torias coming up as enthusiastically as ever on the side of adventure, and Joran whispering in her ear with urgings of a different kind of excitement.

“Why not?” she asked, in response to Kira’s insistence, raising an eyebrow that was as much defiance as it was curiosity. “He’s got a weapon. He could have shot both of us on sight if he’d wanted to.”

“Could’ve shot her plenty of times when she was on my side, too,” Sisko volunteered helpfully, with a boyish wink towards Kira. “But I didn’t do it then, and I don’t plan on doing it now.” He trailed off for a second or two, eyes narrowing, and Dax found she was getting a little dizzy trying to keep up with his whiplash-changing moods. “Well, not unless you lovely ladies force my hand, anyway.”

He had guts, she couldn’t deny that. And maybe that was part of the appeal. He wasn’t half as charming as the Benjamin Sisko that Dax knew so well, but he was still a Benjamin Sisko of sorts, and there was no denying that he still had some of the familiar charisma. Maybe it was because he looked so much like her Benjamin. Maybe it was because she really wanted to believe that he could be like the man she knew; she was aching, she realised, desperate to see some shred of familiarity underneath those dirt-smudged clothes and the primal gleam in his eye. Hell, maybe she was just a sucker for a good story. Whatever the reason, Dax found herself compelled to hear whatever it was he had to say.

“Don’t you think we should at least hear him out?” she asked.

“Yes, _Major_ …” Though his tone was mocking and cruel, Sisko nonetheless made a token gesture of laying down his weapon. “Don’t you think you should at least hear me out? You don’t even know why I’m here. I could have a lot to offer you.”

Kira glared at them both. “There’s nothing you could possibly offer either of us from that wretched universe of yours,” she snapped.

“And how exactly do you know that?” he countered, still flashing that disarming smirk of his. “There’s more to my universe than Terok Nor, you know.”

Dax grimaced; the conflict was making her uncomfortable, Jadzia’s distaste for confrontation of any description undercut by Joran’s love of it, the excitement as Kira’s ire grew higher, as she grew closer and closer to the point of throwing a punch. That part of her, the dangerous and uncomfortable part, wanted to encourage it, to see how far they would go, to watch and smile as the two of them came to blows. Maybe they’d try to kill each other. Wouldn’t that be—

 _No_. She took a deep breath, swallowing air, struggling to keep herself grounded, to be young and naive, idealistic and hopeful, to be _Jadzia_.

“Kira.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, high-pitched and sickly; she would have said anything, she realised, just to silence them both, to take the decision out of their hands, to quell the threat of a fight before it spilled over into bloodshed and she lost herself to Joran’s rapturous savagery. “I really do think we should hear him out.”

“I don’t care what you think,” Kira snapped. “I’m the superior officer here, and I—”

“Nerys.” Dax heard her voice crack, fragile as glass. “Please.”

Something in the way she spoke seemed to break through to Kira, touching her on a fundamental level, and her shoulders slumped. “You’re going to regret it,” she warned, but that was all the argument she gave.

“If I do,” Dax said, “I’ll be sure to let you say ‘I told you so’ before I keel over and die.”

“This isn’t funny, Dax.” She looked almost sullen, expression dark and bitter, clearly still unconvinced. “I’m the one who’s been to his side, remember? I’m the one who knows what they’re like over there.”

Dax nodded her acknowledgement, but wasn’t about to be overruled so easily. “You’re also the one who mentioned in her report, quite a few times, that he helped you to escape,” she reminded her, pointed but without accusation. “Come on, Nerys… what happened to that ‘trust’ thing we were discussing earlier?”

“Apparently it’s still limited to benevolent Cardassians,” Kira retorted, lowering her voice for the first time and gritting out the words through clenched teeth.

Dax chuckled weakly. She reached out, touching Kira’s arm and letting her hand linger just a beat or two longer than necessary, as much for her own sake as for Kira’s. She needed her strength, her conviction, she needed the faith they’d talked about just a few minutes earlier; she needed Kira to cool off, to push her own anger to the back of her mind, to step forward and be Nerys. Dax’s control was hanging by a thread; if Kira lost hers, then it wouldn’t matter what either of them thought.

“Look,” she forced out, willing her voice not to crack again. “I promise, if either one of us gets killed, it’ll be on my record, not yours.”

She was only partially joking, but it seemed to placate Kira at least a little. Well, either that, or else the frightened desperation in her eyes, the urgent plea for one of them to stay calm and composed, the closest thing she could muster to a cry for help right now. Kira had always been observant; she must have seen how close she was, and how much it scared her.

“It had better be,” Kira muttered at last, a grudging concession, and crossed her arms.

“It will,” Dax promised. Then, gulping down another steadying breath, she turned back to the man who looked so much like her dear old friend, the Sisko who was not Benjamin. “All right, talk. But keep it short and sweet; we don’t have all day, and you know as well as I do that Major Kira’s patience isn’t infinite.”

“Believe me,” Sisko deadpanned, “I remember.”

Dax snorted, the closest to a laugh she could muster just then. “Then we’re agreed. Talk fast. And keep your hands where we can see them.”

He grinned at that, entirely too suggestive, and Dax suppressed a shudder. “I’ll put my hands anywhere you want, sweetness.”

“Just get on with it,” Kira muttered, failing to stifle a groan.

So he did. The first thing Dax noticed was how animated he became when he was talking. He couldn’t seem to keep still, hopping restlessly from one foot to the other, and then pacing back and forth across the same metre or so of cramped cockpit space. He didn’t seem nervous, exactly; in fact, he looked like a man in complete control of the world around him, a man who knew perfectly well that he was going to get what he wanted, whether it came willingly or not, and Dax had to fight down another uncomfortable twitch at the sight of such wilful certainty wrapped up in such a jittery body.

She knew how single-minded Benjamin Sisko could be when he felt the need to be, how focused on a cause that he deemed just and righteous. She knew, probably better than he himself knew, where that kind of drive could lead, and seeing the same sort of feverish intensity in this odd counterpart — this man who shared his face but none of his warmth and integrity — struck a very unpleasant chord inside her. Kira was right about how dangerous he was; she knew that now beyond a shadow of doubt.

As he spoke, he continued to look her up and down, leering far more obscenely than he did at Kira. When he looked at Kira, it was with the keen eye of appraisal, as though he was trying to gauge her merit, or trying to figure out how far he could push her before she pushed back; not very, Dax thought, but didn’t say so out loud. When he looked at her, though, he was thoroughly unabashed about it, the lecherous grin on his face making it quite obvious that he was imagining her without her clothes on. Dax wanted to believe he was just trying to make her uncomfortable, working to disarm and unsettle her so that she wouldn’t be as much of a threat, but there was something almost secretive in the curve of his lips as he smirked, something that spoke of an intimacy far deeper than his would-be roguish charms.

He was clever, that much was obvious; maybe he wasn’t the Benjamin she was used to, but Dax could tell there was still a knowledgable slyness underneath all the primitive posturing, even underneath the predatory gleam in his eye as he ogled her, a kind of ruthless sanity that belied the half-crazed look in his eyes. He knew what he wanted, and he would do whatever it took to see it done. The more he talked, the less he actually said, and Dax had been in enough tight spots to recognise the warning signs in that.

She probably didn’t have much of a choice in this at all, she realised; like the real Benjamin Sisko, it seemed that this one already had a plan fully formed in his head, and he would do whatever it took to see it through. Better for all of them, Dax decided, if she could convince herself that it was her decision when she inevitably gave in to him, rather than risk him grabbing his weapon and taking pot-shots to prove his point. A runabout was no place for close-proximity phaser fire; that much she knew from experience.

The upshot of what little she gleaned from his rambling — a whole lot of noise and very little actual information — was that he wanted Dax to go back with him to his universe. Anything beyond that, he kept close to his chest, at least for the time being.

Dax was curious, hungry for details, but Kira had heard more than enough. “Forget it,” she seethed, and Dax had to hold her back to keep her from taking a swing. 

This was clearly personal, and Dax knew better than to try and interject any kind of reason. Still, though, she couldn’t let Kira risk an inter-universe incident, and she kept one hand firmly on her arm even when it became clear that she wouldn’t actually try and hit him. It felt reassuring just to hold her, to relish the contact and let herself imagine that she herself was the one in control, the one who was standing quietly and listening, the one who wasn’t aching to throw punches.

She breathed deeply, focused on the face in front of her, Benjamin’s face. Whether he really was Benjamin Sisko in any meaningful way was another issue entirely; right now, Dax took comfort in looking at him and knowing that she didn’t want to hurt him. Joran’s violence took a backseat, at least for the moment, to the Starfleet officer and the worldly old man who recognised a friend in the face of this stranger.

Kira, of course, was still ranting. “Go back to your precious Intendant,” she seethed. “Go back, and tell her she can find someone else to do her dirty work. And while you’re at it, you can also tell her—”

Sisko burst out laughing for what felt like the hundredth time since his arrival, loud and booming and just as relentless as the rest of him. “You think I’m still working for _her_?” he chortled.

Dax felt a headache building behind her eyes, a pounding pressure born as much from the sound as from the situation itself. There were too many players in this game, she thought wearily, and nobody had thought to even teach her the rules. Oh, how she longed for a tongo wheel.

“Aren’t you?” Kira shot back moodily.

Sisko laughed again, shorter and sharper than before. “I’m sure it will shock you to learn, Major, that I’m not quite so easily sold as you’d like to think.” He shook his head, clearly amused. “You really don’t know the first thing about us, do you?”

“Of course I don’t,” Kira countered; Dax couldn’t help noticing how defensive she sounded, how protective of what little she did know. “And I don’t want to, either. It’s your universe. They’re your people, and your problems. It’s none of my business. And none of hers, either.”

That, Dax knew, was for her benefit, a reminder to them both.

Sisko, of course, wasn’t so easily swayed by logic and reason; Dax doubted Kira had expected him to be, but when he made his riposte, it was a vicious one. “Not counting the part where it’s all your fault, I suppose…”

The muscles in Kira’s arm went whipcord-tight under Dax’s fingers. “It’s none of my business,” she said again, harder, but Sisko must have noticed the way she didn’t deny the accusation. “And even if it was, I have no intention of setting foot in that place again.”

“Well, that’s just fine by me,” Sisko retorted with another of his unnerving smirks. “Your face isn’t exactly a popular one, in case you’ve forgotten. You’d be more trouble than help, and frankly my people have enough trouble on their hands already.”

“Your people,” Kira echoed, rolling her eyes.

Dax sighed. “Kira…”

“Be quiet,” Kira snapped. “You know even less about his universe than I do.”

“I know that,” Dax said softly. “But I still want to hear him out. It’s me he wants. Don’t you think I have a right to know why?”

“You shouldn’t care why,” Kira told her. “You shouldn’t care about anything except sending him back where he came from.”

“You’re probably right,” Dax conceded. “But I still want to hear him out. Benjamin—”

“Dammit, Dax!” In hindsight, she supposed she probably should have anticipated that explosion, and the fury in Kira’s eyes when she whirled around to glare at her. “Stop doing that! Stop talking to him like he’s our Commander Sisko. He’s not. He’s not Commander Sisko, and his not your friend ‘Benjamin’. He’s an intruder, and that’s all you need to know.”

Dax sighed. She knew that perfectly well. She hadn’t lost sight of who they were dealing with or what was going on; she was just trying to be the Dax she had used to be, before she lost herself.

She wanted Kira to see, to understand that she was just trying to get all of the facts together before she made a decision, that she was just trying to be diplomatic about the whole issue, to be a Starfleet officer instead of a Trill with a homicidal maniac inside her head. Kira must realise how hard it was for her, how painful to be the voice of reason when her head was fuzzy with bloodlust and violence, how much of an effort it was for her to silence Joran and be Jadzia, to hold Kira’s arm and hold her back when all she really wanted to do was let her go and relish the frenzy that would inevitably follow. Surely Kira knew that, surely she understood why it was so important for Dax to cling to the ghost of diplomacy, the calmness and the quietude, the need to hear all sides.

“I know he’s not Benjamin,” she said out loud. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t—”

“Yes it does!” Kira sounded positively disgusted. “He’s a deranged lunatic, Dax! A deranged lunatic from another universe, in case you’ve forgotten, and he’s asking you to go back there with him. This isn’t a discussion. It’s not a conversation, or a debate, or one of those ridiculous _‘let’s all sit down and talk about our feelings for an hour’_ sessions you Starfleet types love so much. We’re not hearing him out, and you’re not going back with him. And that’s final!”

Apparently, Sisko had seen that coming, because he burst into another explosive fit of semi-psychotic giggling.

“Oh, that’s just what she would say,” he spluttered when he finally stopped, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. Kira scowled, and he sobered a little, as much as he was capable of being sober at all. “You’re a lot more like her than you think you are, you know.”

“Shut up,” Kira snarled, cold as ice. “Shut up, or I swear I’ll—”

“Fine,” Sisko shrugged. “Deny it all you want. While you’re doing that, I’m going to do what I came here to do.” He turned back to Dax. “Look, I don’t know what you’re supposed to be on this side, but where I come from you’re… well, you’re _her_.”

“I am?” Dax asked, still befuddled.

He nodded. “You’re Dax,” he said, smiling like he’d known her all his life, like he really was her Benjamin. “You’re my Dax.”

“ _Your_ Dax?” Kira interrupted furiously.

Under normal circumstances, Dax would have been a little flattered by how possessive she sounded, how offended on Dax’s behalf. She would have smiled, maybe even blushed a little, to think that Kira felt enough for her to take offence when someone else claimed her as theirs. She would have, and part of her wanted to, but right now there were more important things to worry about, and her mind was already occupied by the man standing before them, the familiar stranger, this man who both was and was not Benjamin Sisko, this man who seemed to look at her and see someone who both was and was not Jadzia Dax. She couldn’t deny that it was a little alluring; there was a taste of the forbidden in all of this, and if there was one thing Dax had never been able to resist, it was the forbidden.

“My Dax,” Sisko said again, a self-satisfied retort to Kira’s outburst.

Kira threw up her hands, shaking her head in despair and disgust. “You see?” she cried, glaring at Dax. “Be reasonable, Jadzia. Look at what we’re dealing with. Think about—”

But Dax was already halfway gone, lost to the call of forbidden familiarity. “Quiet,” she said, in spite of all the voices in her head telling her that Kira was right. “I’m listening.”

Sisko grinned at that, wide as a Cheshire cat, looking for all the world like a man who had already won his imaginary war. Somewhere in a distant, dusty corner of her mind, Dax realised that she was treading a very dangerous line, that this Sisko was even more charismatic than her own, that she was probably falling into every trap he was laying down; it was the same corner that knew Kira was right, even as she fought to ignore that possibility with everything she had. She was being the rational one, she reminded herself, seduced by the idea. She was the peacekeeper, the voice of reason. She was being diplomatic, just like Curzon would have wanted her to.

Still, though, she couldn’t help wondering if this Sisko knew what he was doing to her, how his presence was affecting her, how quickly she would yield to the sight of a friend in a stranger’s face. Was it deliberate?, she wondered. Had he come here specifically to worm his way into her head because he knew that she would fall for it where Kira would resist? The thought should have strengthened her resolve, should have turned her back to the place she needed to be, driven her to heed Kira’s warnings. Kira was definitely on her side, after all, and this unknown man who was not her dear friend still hadn’t made his alignment clear at all. There was evidence in every direction, but she didn’t want to see it. She felt helpless, blinded by loyalty, both to the Benjamin Sisko that she knew, and to the corners of Dax that weren’t driven by violence.

“I need your help,” Sisko said, suddenly looking very serious.

“We know that already,” Kira muttered.

Sisko and Dax both ignored her. “Actually,” he went on, “it’s your doctor’s help I was after. Your innocent little Doctor Bashir.” He shook his head, amused, then pressed on. “Truth be told, sweetness, you’re even better than I could’ve hoped for. You got smarts even your precious doctor doesn’t. You see, my woman…” He seemed to catch himself there, hanging his head in what almost passed for apology. “My Dax, that is. She… well, she’s a little unwell, you see.”

Dax flinched. As if this wasn’t already dangerously personal, that definitely got her attention. “What do you mean ‘unwell’?”

He rolled his eyes. “I mean ‘unwell’. And it’s not like we’re in the neighbourhood of a decent Trill physician. Or even a bad one, come to that.”

Kira threw up her hands, disgusted all over again. “So naturally, you decided that the best possible alternative would be to cross over to a parallel universe and get one from there?”

Sisko regarded her steadily for a beat, expression cool and calm. “Pretty much,” he said with a shrug, and for once he sounded almost serious. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say it’s the most viable option we have right now.”

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all,” Kira muttered, biting and sarcastic.

“Never said it wasn’t ominous,” Sisko replied. “Just being straight with you. I figure, if I’m gonna be taking your lady back with me, might as well be straight about it.”

“I wouldn’t call anything about this ‘straight’,” Kira grumbled. “Jadzia, you can’t seriously be considering this.”

“I don’t know,” Dax said, trying to come off as ambivalent and thoughtful, but even to her own ears she sounded like a child begging for approval, like someone who had already made up their mind and really hoped she could sweet-talk Kira into agreeing with her.

Kira threw up her hands, sensing a lost cause, and turned back to Sisko. “So what’s wrong with her?” she demanded without the least trace of sympathy. “Got hold of some bad bloodwine? Caught a head cold? Bitten by a Badlands mosquito?”

Sisko stared at her as though she’d grown an extra head. “If we knew that, we wouldn’t need help, would we?” he pointed out, then shot Dax a wry grin. “I guess the Intendant was the one who got the brains, huh?”

Dax chewed her tongue. Somewhere at the back of her mind, a klaxon was sounding, warning her to run away, to get out while she still could, to listen to Kira and send this madman back to his own universe. That was the sensible thing, she knew, the thing that any sane person would do… but even as she willed her legs to move, she found that she couldn’t. She felt morbidly invested in this now; it had become personal almost the moment her own name was mentioned, and just as she felt drawn to this man who looked so much like her old friend she felt a similar draw to the woman he called ‘his’, this potential other version of herself, a Dax that belonged to this Benjamin.

“Well, can you describe any symptoms?” she asked, before she could think better of it.

He shrugged, making an effort to appear as though he didn’t care, even as his presence here said that he did care a great deal. “She’s even more of a bitch than usual, if that counts?” he muttered, earning himself a fresh scowl from both of them. 

“Watch your mouth,” Kira said on Dax’s behalf, but Sisko just laughed.

“She keeps whining about hallucinations,” he went on after a moment. “Says it’s probably some kind of Trill thing, but she won’t say anything more than that. She’s not exactly big on Trill stuff, if you catch my drift.” Dax didn’t, but she didn’t say so, and Sisko moved swiftly on. “And it’s not that I’m worried, you see, but she’s my woman and I swore I’d do right by her. Not that she deserves it, of course…” There was affection in the insult, a kind of warmth that sounded odd coming from him. “And besides, we’re not exactly in the safest of positions right now. It’d be dangerous for all of us if she took up permanent residence in the land of crazy.”

“I’m sure you’d know all about that particular neighbourhood,” Kira muttered wryly, but her features had softened.

For her part, Dax had stopped listening at _‘hallucinations’_. Her blood was running cold and her breath was hitching and stuttering in her chest. She could still feel Joran at the edge of her mind, all the rage and hate still simmering, shunted aside for now by the seriousness of their present situation, but ever present and ever threatening, and she didn’t need to hear anything more than just that word to know exactly what the problem was.

Mirror universe or no mirror universe, it seemed that some things were doomed to be the same, and for a moment she felt that anger rushing back to the surface, the indignity and the fury at being used and abused and cast aside, Joran’s hatred at being erased coupling with Jadzia’s own upset. She was still shaken, she realised, by how ready and willing her erstwhile mentors at the Symbiosis Commission had been to just sit back and let her die for the sake of their damned secrets.

“You have to get her to Trill,” she heard herself mumbling, but her voice sounded distant and very quiet.

Sisko pouted, scowling at her like a child about to throw a tantrum unless he was given his favourite toy in the next two seconds. “I told you, that’s not an option.” He didn’t elaborate, and Dax didn’t ask him to.

“I don’t care if it’s an option or not,” she said. “She needs to get to Trill. She needs to…”

Her breath caught, ragged and choking in her throat, and Kira rested a light hand on her back. “Jadzia.”

Sisko, meanwhile, had levelled his gaze at her again, and for the first time she saw something in him that wasn’t raw mania, the half-crazed ferocity of a man on the run. Dax didn’t know the intimacies of his universe, but she could tell at a glance that this man was a far cry from the pampered puppet Kira had described in her reports, a simpering wannabe pirate running errands for the Intendant just to keep from having to do any real work. She had found it hard to believe that description at the time, and she believed it even less now with the evidence standing right there in front of her, looking at her with a face she knew so well and an expression that was equal parts anger and desperation. This wasn’t a man whose interests extended only as far as his own ego; she could tell that at a glance. This was a man who was willing to do anything to help someone he cared for.

This man really was Benjamin Sisko, she realised, and knew that she was lost.

“I can’t help you,” she told him, willing him to understand. “If she’s… if it’s the same there as it is here… if she’s dealing with what I went through… she needs a Trill doctor. She needs—”

“You’re a Trill,” he pointed out, grinning that half-crazed grin of his. “That’s halfway there. We can deal with the rest once we’ve got you there and you’ve seen her for yourself. You’re her, aren’t you? If anyone can help, it’s you.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Dax said, almost begging.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, and just like that, it was as though their brief moment of connection hadn’t happened at all. “It’s exactly as simple as that.”

All of a sudden, he’d devolved right back to where he had been; all of a sudden, he was the same twisted creature who had boarded them, the man who might have Benjamin’s face but was nothing like him at all, the man who may or may not have good intentions but was ready to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. All of a sudden, he wasn’t Benjamin at all; he was a madman, and he was extremely dangerous.

He took a step forward, heavier this time and echoing with very real threat. Whatever trace of the Benjamin Sisko Dax had thought she’d seen in him was gone now; his was the face of someone who could see only as far as getting his own way. He had formed a plan, and he was going to see it through, no matter the cost to those around him.

“Not another step…” Kira warned him, and Dax belatedly remembered that she too could be dangerous when she wanted to be. She cut a glance at Dax, but it was just that, a glance; clearly, she had made up her mind too, and she wasn’t going to stand idle for one more second. “You’re getting back on that transporter pad and you’re going right back to that hole you crawled out from.” She narrowed her eyes. “Now.”

Sisko didn’t move. “Like I said, Major,” he said, leering at her yet again. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Everything happened at once.

Acting with her finely-honed Bajoran instincts, Kira shouldered her way between the two of them, trying to shield Dax with her smaller frame (like Dax needed her protection, she thought with some bitterness; like she wasn’t perfectly capable of taking care of her own problems). At the same time, moving so fast that she almost missed it, Sisko whirled about, spinning in a full and perfect circle and whipping his weapon back into his hand from what seemed like an impossible distance.

Truth be told, if she wasn’t staring unwittingly down its barrel, Dax would have taken a moment to be impressed by his speed and reflexes; in fact, somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear Emony applauding. But, of course, there was no time just then to indulge the nostalgic fancies of a one-time gymnast, so Dax ignored her. The bigger issue now, for the second time, was the potential for bloodshed.

As quickly as the flurry of action had happened, it stopped, something of a stalemate passing between them, Sisko with his weapon and Kira who was more than able to disarm him before he got a shot off. Dax, standing uselessly behind her, felt frustrated and useless. She felt like a prize, like a token they were fighting for, the last cut of targ at a Klingon feast. She wanted to do something, to take her fate back into her own hands, even if it meant making the wrong decision, but she knew all too well that one or both of them would do something stupid if she took so much as a step.

“I told you,” Kira hissed in her ear, sounding utterly furious. “I told you not to listen to him. I told you not to let your guard down. You damned sentimental Trill, you’ll get us both killed.”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Sisko said with another laugh; this one was bitter, though, almost resentful, like he really had hoped to avoid all of this messiness. Dax supposed he was used to people doing what he told them to without question, because he was a seething cauldron of juvenile impatience, a temper tantrum just waiting to happen. “You’re the one who enjoys the killing, _Intendant_ , not me. I’m just a regular guy trying to clean up the mess you made when you came over to my side.”

“Don’t pin this on me,” Kira hissed, jabbing a furious finger at him. “Don’t you dare try to blame me for any of this. And don’t you dare call me ‘Intendant’.”

“Why not?” he shot back, unoffended and completely at his ease now that he had his weapon back in his hand. “You’re her, just as surely as this pretty little thing is my Dax.”

“She’s not yours,” Kira snarled. “And I’m not responsible for your problems, so don’t—”

“But you are, aren’t you?” His voice was like molasses, sickeningly sweet and unbearably thick. “It was you who changed everything, wasn’t it? You and your little doctor friend, stumbling into my house and turning everything upside-down.” His expression flickered, but only for a second. Dax wondered if Kira noticed it, or if she’d only caught it because she knew the lines of Benjamin Sisko’s face so well. “It was perfectly fine before you showed up. We were happy.”

“Happy being a slave?” Kira shot back, bitter and angry. “It’s not my fault you grew a conscience. And even if it was, I wouldn’t be sorry about it. Your ‘house’ needed a little rearranging.”

“It sure did,” he agreed, a snarl through bared teeth, hating that she was right. “And I’m the poor idiot who has to make sure it happens.”

“You’re an idiot, all right,” Kira muttered.

“Look,” Sisko said again, sounding irritable. “We’re through talking about this. I came here to get help, and one way or the other I’m going to bring it back.” He waved his weapon, an open invitation for resistance from either one of them. “It’s up to you how this goes down, but I’ll say this one more time: I’m not like your friend the Intendant. I don’t like getting my pretty hands all messed up with blood. That stuff’s a bitch to get out. But just because I don’t want to, that doesn’t mean I won’t do it if I have to.” He spread his arms wide. “The choice is yours, ladies.”

Kira opened her mouth, no doubt to shoot him down once more, but Dax held up a hand to try and silence her. “Kira…”

“No.” Kira sounded nothing short of furious. “We’re not playing it your way any more. No offence, Dax, but you don’t know the first thing about this Sisko, or his damn universe.”

“I know that,” Dax said, very quietly.

And she did. Looking at him now, grinning like a lunatic as he trained his weapon on them, a desperate man in a desperate situation, willing to do desperate things, she knew perfectly well that she could not rely on her experiences with her Benjamin Sisko to predict anything this one did. But honestly, that didn’t matter. It wasn’t about him now. It had stopped being about him the moment he said that word.

 _Hallucinations_. Somewhere out there, in a universe so far away and yet apparently within touching distance, there was a Jadzia Dax who was going through the same torture she had been through.

She could see her face — her own face — so clearly that it hurt. Another Jadzia, a Jadzia who was angry and scared, unaware of what was happening inside of her. A Jadzia who was fighting down those terrifying memories, the resurfacing life of a psychotic murderer, who was struggling against everything that Dax was still fighting within herself, but without any of the resources that had saved her life. A Jadzia who could not go back to the Symbiosis Commission, who had no benzocyatizine to bring her isoboramine levels back up when they dipped too low, who had no access to the symbiont pools that would help those unwanted memories resurface more easily. A Jadzia, isolated and alone and thoroughly helpless.

“Jadzia…” Kira sighed, seeming to sense the shift in her friend’s focus, knowing all too well what she must be thinking right now. Did she know, too, how deeply that name affected her right now? “Don’t make this personal. Don’t make it—”

“But it is personal.” Suddenly, Dax couldn’t look at either of them. “If she’s going through what I went through with… with…”

She bit down on her lip, swallowed his name back down as his temper threatened to rise up in her again. Kira stared at her as her lip started to bleed, as the taste of blood soothed her mind, and for the first time since the mirror image of Benjamin Sisko had beamed onto their runabout, she looked helpless.

“Jadzia,” she said again.

“Nerys.” Dax bit down harder. “I can’t. What I went through… what she’s still going through… I can’t. I can’t let her go through it alone. I can’t.”

“But there’s nothing you can do!”

Kira was tangibly angry, frustrated with Dax for even considering this, and with herself for letting it get to this point, furious with this unfamiliar ghost of Benjamin Sisko, this twisted madman who would manipulate the emotions of someone he hadn’t even met just to get his way, and then pull a phaser on them when that didn’t work. She was angry about everything, Dax knew, and it made her sad to see her that way, so unable to understand.

“I have to try.”

“She needs to go to Trill. You said that yourself.” It was a last-ditch effort; futile as she must know it was, she had to try too, and Dax commended her for that. “What exactly do you think you can do for her?”

“I don’t know,” Dax answered truthfully. “But I have to do something. I have to try, Nerys. I…” She heard a barking laugh from across the cockpit, and only then remembered that she was still being held at gunpoint, and that it was Benjamin Sisko doing the deed. “Not for you,” she told him. “You’re not the Benjamin Sisko I know, and I don’t take kindly to being dragged away to a parallel universe against my will. So don’t flatter yourself I’m doing this for you.”

He laughed again, waving his phaser about like it was a harmless child’s toy. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn why you do it, just so long as you do it.”

Dax ignored him; she turned back to Kira, pleading with her eyes and the tremor in her voice. “Nerys, please. For her. For me. Please.”

“She’ll be perfectly safe,” Sisko promised, though Dax didn’t believe that any more than Kira did. He took his eyes off them for a moment, fumbling in his pockets with his free hand, then carelessly tossed a small cylindrical device at Kira. “You’re more than welcome to follow us if you like, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” He grinned, the lazy grin of someone who had everyone exactly where he wanted, and didn’t really care what they thought of him now. “Like I said, _Intendant_ , your face isn’t exactly a popular one among my people.”

Kira caught the device, barely glancing at it. “I don’t care about your people,” she hissed, eyes locked on Dax. “I care about mine.”

“I’ll be fine,” Dax promised, brushing the back of Kira’s hand with her own, a fleeting moment of intimacy that did not go unnoticed by their invader-turned-captor. “Go to Bajor. Enjoy your pilgrimage. I’ll catch up with you there, once I’m done.” Kira’s expression wavered, tender emotion overshadowing the anger for a moment. “I promise.”

Kira swore, once under her breath and then a second time very loudly. She clenched the little device in her fist, hard enough that Dax was sure it would buckle. “If I don’t hear from you in two days — two days, Lieutenant, and not a minute more — I’ll come after you.” She shot Sisko a hard look. “Both of you. And believe me, you don’t want that to happen any more than I do.”

“I’m still smarting from the last time,” Sisko muttered. “I have no intention of seeing that repeated.”

“That makes two of us,” Kira said.

Sisko laughed again, once more for luck, then turned back to Dax. “Your chariot awaits, Madame.”

Dax took a moment before she followed him, squeezing Kira’s hand and looking right into her eyes. She saw anger there, frustration and betrayal, and that hurt; she willed Kira to see the urgency in her, the need to do this, to make peace with her own demons as much as to help this unfamiliar new version of herself. She had no idea what to expect, what kind of person this other Jadzia was, and it frightened her to wonder… but not nearly as much as it disturbed her to even think of turning away from her.

Joran’s memories were more painful than seven other lifetimes combined; even the visceral moment of Torias’s shuttle accident, relived in nightmares again and again for months after she was first joined, didn’t even come close to comparing. Back then she couldn’t have imagined the depth of pain, the weight of anger and hate, the twisted perversions that would soon be taking up residence inside her, banishing such sweet and simple things as death until they were nothing. It was beyond description, beyond anything anyone else could understand, even Kira, and just the idea of leaving another soul to suffer through all of that alone turned her stomach and made all her muscles clench.

No. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t. Even now, even with all the help she’d received on Trill, all the resources of the Symbiosis Commission and the symbiont pools… even with all of that, she could still barely endure Joran’s memories on her own. What kind of person would she be if she just walked away and let another Trill (no, so much more than that: another her, another Dax, another _Jadzia_ ) fight him off alone?

She had to try. And Kira had to understand.

“It’s not about him…” she whispered again.

“I know.” Kira breathed a tragic sigh. “I know what it’s about.”

“I have to.”

“I know.”

Dax leaned in, close enough to taste Kira’s breath. “I have to,” she said again. “For her. For… for both of us. Nerys, I…”

“I know.” Kira closed her eyes for just a moment longer than a blink. When she opened them again, they were wet and wide and impossibly dark. _Obsidian_ , Dax thought, and shivered. “I hope you find what you need, Dax. I really do.”

Dax pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “So do I.”


	5. Chapter 5

Inter-universe teleportation, it turned out, did not play well with symbionts.

Sisko tried to warn her, of course. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride,” he said, with obvious relish, and Dax had laughed off the warning with her usual cocksure confidence, channelling her inner Curzon, her inner Torias, all the corners of Dax that had endured and withstood the most unpleasant things the galaxy could throw at them. Even young Jadzia had always thought of herself as pretty durable. After all, she was the one who’d breezed through Starfleet Academy without so much as a flinch, and shrugged off zero-gravity training like she’d been floating around in space all her life.

Honestly, though, that was more a matter of necessity than anything else; even back then, young as she was, she’d had big plans, bloody-minded and determined to be joined as early as possible. Starfleet Academy made for good training, yes, but ultimately it was just a means to an end, and if she wanted any chance at all of being accepted into the initiate program once she returned to Trill, much less actually being chosen for joining, she needed to be beyond the peak of physical perfection. Starfleet had been a test, nothing more, and she had passed it with flying colours.

After all that, she thought, surely she could handle a little universe-hopping.

Apparently not, and in hindsight, she wasn’t sure which was worse: the trip itself, or the humiliation that followed.

She had just enough time to take in the basic outline of the world that flickered into existence around her — black and grey rock faces where she would have expected walls and a ceiling, a trampled-down dirt floor, and a hazy sea of faces staring at her — before she was struck by a wave of dizziness so potent that even those few bare-bones details turned fuzzy and distorted. That was all the warning she had, and then that strange-looking new world unravelled around her, greying out and fading to mist as her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Dammit…” she heard herself groan as she hit the floor, earth damp and cold, yielding beneath her knees as they buckled.

Above her, she could just about make out the silhouette of the man who wasn’t Benjamin, the half-crazed and manic Sisko that belonged to this dark earthen place, and though the lines of his face were blurry and indistinct, fading along with the rest of this place, she could feel the surprise radiating out of him. He didn’t say anything, but she was vaguely aware of the sudden tension in his posture, confusion and disbelief and the faintest hint of disappointment, all bound up in a kind of panic. He didn’t know what to do, she realised, and somewhere in her fog-clouded mind, she found that hilarious.

Apparently, for all his warnings, even he hadn’t expect her to crumble so completely. Even in her dizzied state, it worried her far more than she cared to admit that he didn’t snap off one of those acid quips of his, simply stood there frozen in place as he looked down at her.

And then there were others, a milling sea of bodies, people all around her. Some of them, she thought she recognised, and others she was sure she’d never seen before in her life, but she couldn’t quite make sense of either group. One or two were crouched at her side, more out of curiosity than any desire to help, but most of them just stood over her like Sisko, gawking like she was an exhibition in some old-world museum, like she was an object, something to be stared at but never helped. The world was spinning, her insides turning to gelatine, and all they wanted to do was stare.

“Wow,” someone said, the hint of an accent she thought she knew, but weather-beaten and worn down. “She’s not very tough, is she?”

“I don’t care how tough she is,” said Benjamin (or Benjamin’s voice, anyway, whatever that meant just now; she wished she could remember…). “So long as she does what she’s supposed to do, I don’t give a damn if she faints at the sight of blood.”

In some distant corner of her scrambled brain, Dax was alert enough to be offended by that.

That same rough-edged voice snorted a derisive chuckle. “Think the captain’s going soft.”

“You’ll think twice about that if you don’t back off.” There was danger in Benjamin’s voice, something jagged and savage, and Dax flinched on behalf of whoever he was talking to. “Now, give the lady some room.”

A low huff of laughter, a different voice with a different accent, but just as familiar. “You’d better do it, Julian. You know what he’s like when you piss him off.”

“Oh, please. Just look at him. He’s practically fawning over her. Just because she looks like his little—”

_Crack!_

In her hazy state, it took Dax a long moment to recognise the explosion as the sound of bone against bone, a powerful punch finding its target without restraint. She supposed it was Benjamin who had landed the blow, no doubt against Julian — was it Julian? her Julian? — but she didn’t have the strength to raise her head and check for sure.

She heard Benjamin’s voice, anyway, and one or two others as well, all of them yelling, each trying to drown out the others, but it hurt her head to try and make out any particular individual. They were fighting, she realised, a full-on fist-fight between maybe five or six of them, and she moaned against the wet earth as the scent of blood filled her nostrils. Her fingers itched to join in, to help them kill each other, if that was what they wanted, or else to stake her own claim in their savage little hierarchy.

In the back of her head, she heard other voices, familiar ones, ones that came as naturally as breathing. Curzon and Audrid and all the others. Her hosts, Dax’s hosts, those softly guiding voices telling her what to do and who she was. Curzon and Audrid, Emony and Torias, Tobin and Lela… and then, overpowering them all, shattering them just like that stomach-churning sound of bone on bone, drowning them all just like he drowned everything else that he touched, _Joran_.

Joran, with his hate and his poison and his sick and twisted mind. Joran, so much louder than all the others, silencing them without the least effort. She shouldn’t have been surprised, she supposed; Audrid always spoke too softly, and Curzon always slurred when he was drunk, and how was she supposed to make sense of that? Tobin mumbled and Torias bragged; Lela only spoke when she thought it was important, and Emony was too busy swaggering to say much at all. How was she supposed to block out all that violence when they were the ones who were supposed to tell her how? How was she supposed to ignore Joran’s bloodlust and his rage, the itch to rise up onto her shaky knees, to join the fight breaking out above her, to punch and kick and scratch and claw them all to pieces? How was she supposed to hear their cries to resist the taste of blood when its memory was spilling out inside her head and filling all of their useless mouths?

She tried to rise up, even just to her knees, but she could still feel the residual hum of transporter energy, her body twisted and contorted in impossible ways. She could feel the symbiont inside of her, scared and motion-sick, scrambled and confused and even more twisted than the rest of her; it felt like it was choking, like it couldn’t breathe, and its fear radiated out to take her too.

The symbiont always made everything so complicated, she thought dizzily, and pressed her face to the cold dirt floor. Benjamin (or whoever he was) was still on his feet, wasn’t he? He was just fine. But then, of course, he didn’t have a worm in his belly and he didn’t have seven lifetimes — no, eight lifetimes — living and dying and screaming in his head. He wasn’t Dax, and there was about enough time for her to remember that _Dax_ was the reason why she was here in the first place (or Jadzia, anyway), before the voices outside got too loud and the ones inside got too quiet, before the fog got too thick and the world became too overwhelming, before what little strength she had left abandoned her completely, and even the dirt beneath her cheek felt warm and welcome next to the clamour fading out above.

“I’m tough enough to kick all of your worthless asses…” she heard herself mumble, a belated response to an insult she could barely remember, and promptly lost consciousness.

*

_“This isn’t honourable.”_

_Jadzia growled, hunching over her prey like a wild animal. The bedsheets were drenched in blood, warm and red and sticky, but she paid the stain no mind; her skin was crimson too, and what meagre modesty she might once have had was long gone. The sheets were more for decoration than protection by now, ripped up and tangled all around her, a hindrance more than anything useful. She wanted to tear them from the bed and throw them out, but she didn’t have the patience to deal with them._

_Besides, there were more interesting things to take up her time now. Laid bare and spread out between her knees, Kira’s body was bloodsoaked as well, ripped apart just like the sheets. Her chest was torn open, exposed and naked, a great gaping chasm of insides turned out, splintered ribs and raw meat warm against the bloody sheets, everything inside of her on display for all to see. Everything, that is, except her heart._

_Her heart, of course, belonged to Jadzia. She had taken it, claimed it and won it like a prize. She had made love to it, and now she was eating it._

_But she wasn’t alone. She should have been; she was sure she was alone when it happened, when the fury inside of her snapped, and Kira’s neck snapped with it. Kira, exposed and naked and beautiful beneath her, who had been in the wrong place at the wrong moment and had paid the price for it. She was sure they were alone then, because it wouldn’t have happened at all if they weren’t. If someone else had been there, even someone who was long dead, she knew they would have stopped it._

_It had been nothing short of slaughter. Kira, still sweaty and euphoric, breathtaking in the afterglow of her orgasm, had no idea what hit her. She’d been smiling; that was the worst of it. In the moment when Jadzia’s hands went suddenly tight and relentless around her throat, she was smiling._

_Jadzia had smiled as well. She’d felt the heat inside her as they’d made love, just as she always felt it, that itch under her skin, always there, even in the most intimate moments. The whole time, she had felt it, humming and crackling through her veins, arousal so wrong and yet so similar to the slick slide of her flesh on Kira’s, a very different kind of passion to the one given voice in whimpers and cries as Kira pressed against her and beneath her and inside her. That was a good passion, a good heat, the inevitable flames of desire, of too many feelings staved off for too long, of emotion and physicality, of sex and love and faith. It was the passion of being alive, the heat of living and breathing and feeling._

_This wasn’t like that. This heat, this passion… it was raw and vicious, an exposed nerve made sensitive by too much stimulation, need turned to violence, want to hate._

_She tried to think about it, to wonder at the differences, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t think at all. Thinking required sense, and she was countless light-years away from sense right now. All she had was the violence and the hate, need and want undercut by darker things, the taste of blood and muscle and meat in her mouth, Kira’s chest ripped open in front of her, the hollow where her heart should be. They had needed each other, she remembered idly, back before this began. At least, Jadzia had needed Kira; she suspected Kira had only wanted her, but even cooling want could sound like need between the sheets._

_But what did any of that matter now? Kira was dead; she would never need or want anything again. It was Dax who needed now, Dax who wanted. It was Dax who hungered, and Dax who fed…_

_“It’s not honourable.”_

_She looked up, eyes wide and wild, the half-eaten heart still clutched like a treasure between two bloody fists. “What do you know about honour, old man?” she hissed, baring her teeth._

_Curzon bared his own, jagged and Klingon. “Show some respect, little girl,” he snapped. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here at all.”_

_Jadzia huddled once more over the heart in her hands, taking another defiant bite as Curzon shook his head. It tasted bitter, unpleasant, treachery spiced with guilt, and it was a struggle to keep it down. Still, though, her stubbornness overpowered her weak stomach, and she refused to let him see that she was not as strong as him. She had earned this. The bitterness and the blood, the heavy weight in her stomach and the raw meat filling her mouth… she had earned it all. She had earned the body beneath her, too, the chest ripped open and the throat torn apart; she had earned everything, and she would not let him take it from her._

_“She warned you,” he went on, as ruthless as the hate bleeding through her. “She said you’d lose yourself if you killed. She told you it would happen.”_

_“She didn’t know any more about it than you do,” Jadzia snarled back, snapping her jaws. “I’m not lost.”_

_“Who are you trying to convince?” he demanded. “I’m a lot older than you, little girl, and wiser too. You should have listened to me when you had the chance.”_

_“When you tried to kick me out, you mean?”_

_“When I tried to save you from yourself,” he corrected. “You weren’t cut out to be a host. Look at you. I’d say you’re proving me right, wouldn’t you?”_

_“And what would you know about it?” she demanded. “You couldn’t do any better.” She would have liked to kill him too, but he was already dead. It was typical of him, she thought, going out of his way to make things difficult for her. Well, she could make things difficult for him too, she decided, and hissed his name in a vicious curse. “Who are you to lecture me? All you ever did was drink and fight, and where did it get you? You’re just as dead as she is.”_

_“You’d be a better person if that was all you did, too.” he told her icily. “Drink and fight and die. You’d save us all a lot of trouble if that was all you ever were.”_

_That was true. Jadzia knew that, and it hurt. She covered the pain by taking another bite of Kira’s heart, choking on the taste, the rancid memory of lust and pleasure. “You didn’t seem to think so. You let me back into the initiate program. You let me have Dax.”_

_“I was wrong,” he said simply. “When you live as long as I did, you make mistakes.” He gave her a hard look, a warning as much as a threat. “And you were the worst mistake I ever made. I never should have let you back into the program. I never should have let you be joined at all… and to my Dax…” He shook his head, and Jadzia tried not to recoil from the distress on his face. “I gave you the greatest gift you could ever have hoped for, and you threw it away like it was nothing. Stupid, ungrateful little girl. You don’t deserve Dax. You’ve never deserved Dax, and you never will.”_

_“I will,” Jadzia snarled. “You’ll see. I will.”_

_“Liar.” Curzon’s eyes flashed, impossibly bright. “Seven lifetimes of potential, and look what you’ve done with them.”_

_“Eight lifetimes,” Jadzia corrected, forcing down another mouthful of muscle._

_In a flash of unchecked anger, Curzon slapped the heart out of her hands. It fell to the blood-drenched bedsheets with a wet sound. “Don’t hide behind him!” he shouted. “You can’t blame him for this. He doesn’t define you any more than the rest of us ever did.”_

_“You did define me!” Jadzia yelled back, just as angry as he was. She rose to her knees, Kira’s body already forgotten. “For years, you defined me! You defined me when I was an initiate, calling me a silly little girl with delusions of joining. You told me I was a child, treated me like I was worthless, and I believed you. I let you define me then, and then I let you define me again when it finally happened, when I proved you wrong and got what I’d worked so hard for. Even after I was joined, that’s all I ever was. Just silly little girl, playing dress-up and pretending to be the great Curzon Dax!” She lunged at him, fists flying, but he parried the blows without the least effort. “Well, I’m not a silly little girl now, and you don’t define me any more.”_

_Suddenly, he looked incredibly sad. “No,” he murmured, speaking more to himself than to her. “I suppose I don’t.”_

_He was so deep in thought, so lost inside his own head, that he dropped his guard, and the violence swelled even higher in Jadzia as she found herself suddenly met with no resistance. It was more than she could do to resist the thrall of brutality then, and she was too gorged on blood to even try. She poured punches on him like water, fists colliding again and again with his face, his chest, his stomach, his shoulders, any part of him that she could reach. Again and again, she lashed out, again and again until he was a battered mess, bloodied and bruised and thoroughly unrecognisable, until the only thing left of the him was a sad smile and a vacant stare._

_Where was the big man now?, she thought as she drove him back, up off the bed and back some more, all the way back until he struck the wall, a thick smear of blood marking his path as he slid down to the floor. Where was the ruthless field docent who had once held young Jadzia’s fate in his hands? Where was the old man who branded her a little girl, the would-be mentor turned heartless tyrant? Where was the great Curzon Dax now?_

_As he crouched, huddled and pathetic at her feet, he covered his face with his hands, both arms raised up high to protect himself, and she leaned in to wrench the barrier away, to haul him back up onto his feet, to glare down into that battered face, to meet those vacant eyes and see the fear, the pain, the defeat. She shoved him up against the wall, another smear of blood to mirror the first, and shook him forcefully as he slumped back against the surface._

_“Get up,” she snarled, though he was already on his feet. “I’m not done with you yet.”_

_He looked up at her, bruised and bleeding and broken. “Yes, you are,” he said softly. “You’re done, old man.”_

_Just like that, the violence faded from her, the hate and the rage and the bloodlust. She felt weak and small and hopeless, every inch the silly little girl that Curzon always said she was… only it wasn’t Curzon looking up at her now._

_“Benjamin?”_

_“Who did you expect?”_

_“I…” She shook her head, trying to clear it, but she couldn’t remember; all she could make out was the distant memory of hatred and violence. “I don’t know.”_

_Dark as they were, his eyes shone under the dim lighting, slow pulses of empathy and sorrow, the friend who had always been by her side, even back when she was— but no. Whoever that Dax was, he was gone and dead now. There was only Jadzia, and the man who stood before her now was her commanding officer. In another life, he might have been her friend, but who could remember that?_

_He looked down at the bed, at Kira’s open chest and her half-eaten heart, and the warmth in his eyes blinked out like the death of a distant star. “What have you done?”_

_“She left me no choice.”_

_The words came automatically, reflexive. It was an excuse she’d used a thousand times before, an echo of times and lives long past, and even as she said it she realised that the words were all she could remember. She left her no choice. They all left her no choice._

_“How long do you expect me to believe that?” he asked, then sighed. “I can’t keep covering for you, old man.”_

_That struck a nerve; she couldn’t say why, but she flinched just the same. A flicker of the same old violence flared again in her chest, catching the spark of her heartbeat and drumming out its own rhythm in perfect tandem, one two three, every other beat that much louder. Who was he to act like some kind of protector? Who was he to look at her like she was worth something to him? Did he treat all his officers like this? Who was she to deserve such special treatment? Who was she?_

_“I don’t need you to cover for me,” she said acidly, rounding on him to vent her frustrations. “And I never asked you to. I don’t need you.”_

_“Well, you sure as hell need someone,” he told her. His voice was soft, as it always was; he never really raised it, never seemed to need to. The world bent to his will, now as it ever did, and he had no need for shouting or orders. “You’re in over your head.”_

_“No, I’m not. I know exactly who I am.”_

_He took her face in his hands, as forceful and as tender as Kira, but when she looked into his eyes, it was like looking at a stranger, like she’d never seen him before. Her commanding officer, her friend, one of the greatest souls she would ever know in as many lifetimes as she would live. Benjamin Sisko, and she knew him, but he was looking at her like he had never seen her before in his life._

_“Then tell me,” he urged. His fingers left pale marks on her skin where they pressed, smearing the blood half-dried on her jaw. Kira’s blood, so sweet and so bitter. “Tell me who you are.”_

_“I’m Dax,” she said. “You know me. I’m Dax. I’m—”_

_“No,” he said, and for a fraction of a second he was Curzon again, then Torias, then Audrid, Emony, Tobin, Lela… all of them. All except one. “No. You’re not.”_

_She screamed. She screamed and she howled, and she picked up the remains of Kira’s heart and threw it against the wall as hard as she could, just short of his head. It tore through the bulkhead, leaving smoke and blood in its wake, a small heart-sized hole that grew bigger and bigger as she watched, expanding like a sun and cracking wide open until it wasn’t a small hole any more, but a chasm bigger than the wall itself, a great gaping void that seemed to stretch across the universe, unbinding everything she’d ever known._

_“Then you tell me!” she cried, and she didn’t even know who she was talking to any more; it could have been any one of them, all of them, or nobody at all. “You tell me who I am!”_

_And then, as quickly as they’d all appeared, they were all gone. Lela, Tobin, Emony, Audrid, Torias, all the ghosts of Daxes past, even Curzon… and Benjamin too. All gone, as though they’d never been there at all, and for a few terrifying moment she was completely alone. Just her, silly little Jadzia, all alone with Kira’s body and that giant heart-shaped hole._

_She felt frightened and lost, isolated and afraid, like the world was closing in around her even as the chasm in the wall grew wider still, expanding ever outwards, swirling and spiralling like a wormhole… and she looked into it (because where else could she look?) but it wasn’t the Prophets that looked back._

_No, there would be no salvation for her, not now; she had killed one of their people, and she would not be saved. There was only her own reflection, a bloodstained skeleton of her face with blank eye sockets and dried-out spots, and a discordant echo of a voice that did not belong to her. No hope. No salvation. Just decay._

_She tried to scream again, to yell into the void, to demand answers from whoever would hear her, but again she couldn’t speak. Her throat was closed up and her voice was gone, every part of her decayed and dying, unrecognisable and intangible, and who was she? Who was she really? Who was this skeletal wreck of a soul that looked back at her, paper-dry bone all stained with blood and skin long since burned away?_

_She didn’t recognise the face, though she knew it was hers. It definitely wasn’t Dax — no, Dax would never be reduced to this — but it wasn’t quite Jadzia any more either. It was something else, someone else, a face she recognised even through a century’s worth of decay and corruption, a sinister smile through teeth turned dark with blood. Curzon was right, she realised. There was no honour in this. There was nothing in it at all, and nothing in her but blood and pain._

_But what did it matter that Curzon was right? Where was the old man now? Where were any of them? Where was Jadzia, even, that shy little girl with so much intelligence and so little wisdom? Where was she?_

_Who was she?_

_And then, just like that, she recognised the face, the twisted reflection staring back at her through the heart-shaped wormhole. She recognised the sinister smile, the bloodstained teeth, the hollow eyeless sockets and the decaying bones, the spots withering under the skin._

_Decay and destruction. Of course. Who else but him?_

_Joran._

_She recognised him now, and in his face she recognised herself. And as she saw them both, she knew. She knew the answer to the elusive question. She knew, of course she knew, but she had to ask it again. She had to hear the question, and hear the answer. She had to hear the words aloud, to hear the truth made real._

_“Who am I?”_

_“You know who you are.” He smiled again, and this time she smiled back. “You’re me.”_

*

She woke to a cacophony of voices, discordant and hazy and distantly familiar, all talking about symbionts.

“…frankly more trouble than they’re worth…”

Dax growled, offended. If she wasn’t still in the process of coming around, only semiconscious and too hazy to stand, she might have lurched to her feet and started throwing punches. The idea made her breath catch in her throat, excitement and horror wrapped around each other, and for a moment she couldn’t remember which was the right thing to feel.

She tried to choke past them both, to remember who and where she was, to remember the difference between what she’d dreamed and what was real, the violent urges that had been so swiftly satisfied in her mind and the savagery that would not be sated by a thousand punches out here in the real world. She took a breath, still struggling to separate them, and curbed the thought of hurting those idiots who did not understand.

And yet, she remembered. She remembered her fist in Curzon’s face, remembered Kira’s heart in her mouth. She could still taste it, still felt the sinew and muscle slide down her throat, unpalatable and undigestible, blood rich and thick in her mouth. The thought of it almost made her gag now, and that in itself was a comfort.

She was still Jadzia Dax; she remembered that too. She was still who she was supposed to be, and she had never killed anyone or eaten their heart. Not out here, not where it counted. She had come close, just once, but even then she had been spared the task. Still, that memory was one she held close even now, wrapped around her thoughts every time she felt a thirst for vengeance or a need for justice. She had been lucky, letting the task fall to a true Klingon, one with a strong stomach and a strong heart, and as grateful as she had been at the time, she was infinitely more so now. Joran was in her head, crying out for violence and death and hate, and there was a part of Jadzia that realised it wouldn’t be so easy to hold him down if she’d already crossed that line all by herself.

It was all so easy for Curzon, she thought. Everything came easily to Curzon, didn’t it? Curzon was smart and witty, worldly and charismatic, and he could get away with anything if he just flashed the right smile. She wondered how he would have dealt with Joran, how he would have responded to all those new memories, to the bloodlust and the hate and that unimaginable anger. Curzon was short-tempered enough on a good day; how would he have coped with a sociopathic murderer taking up residence inside his head? Jadzia didn’t know, and neither did he. How could he?

So then, let him say what he would. Let him judge her all he wanted, accuse her of being weak and small, tell her how unworthy she was. Let him throw his stones and call her ‘little girl’, if that was what he needed to do to convince himself that he was better than her. What the hell did he know, really? How the hell could he say with any confidence that he would have handled this better? He never had to! No, no; that burden fell on Jadzia, and Jadzia alone. Curzon may have been a nightmare as a field docent, but Joran was a nightmare of a different kind, and this time Jadzia was alone. There was no training for this, no advice an old man could give a little girl. Who the hell was Curzon to judge her? For all his years of life and living, he didn’t know a damn thing.

The anger frightened her, and she closed her eyes to ward it off. She didn’t wanting to go back there. She didn’t want to think about Curzon at all, much less to wonder what he’d think if he could see her now, and she definitely didn’t want to know how much better he would have handled this if he’d had the chance. Besides, thinking about his face in her dream just made her think of Kira’s broken body, and that hurt much more.

Again, she remembered the horrible taste of blood and meat and death, Kira’s chest torn open and her insides turning the sheets red, raw muscle in her mouth, bitter and sweet, so hard to keep down, the stench overpowering and the taste making her feel sick. She tasted it again now, so vivid and so clear, and before she even knew what was happening, she found herself rolling over and retching into the dirt, Kira’s name rattling in the back of her throat, choked down and gagged like a prayer from the faithless.

“See?” The voice was cool, distanced, and she wasn’t sure whether she recognised it or not. “More trouble than they’re worth, those slugs.”

Dax groaned, rolling back over onto her back. She tried to close her mind, to think of anything but Kira, to remember anything but the taste of blood and muscle, struggling against her body and her mind. She let herself focus on the insult instead, because it was easier than the rest, and squinted blearily up at a swerving cave ceiling as she caught her breath.

“That wasn’t the symbiont,” she said; it was a lie, hoarse and shuddery, but she didn’t want these familiar strangers to know just how weak she was. “That was me.”

“Great.” A low, frustrated sigh. “So, you’re just naturally pathetic, then?”

She recognised the face as it swayed into focus, though the voice remained distorted and she couldn’t remember his name. Back in the world that made sense, the universe that was hers, he was an ensign. At least, she thought he was; maybe he was a lieutenant. Either way, she had a vague idea of who he was now that she was starting to come back to herself. A headstrong security officer who wore his uniform like a badge of pride and made a living out of second-guessing Constable Odo at every available opportunity just because he wasn’t Starfleet. Here, apparently, he was just a loud-mouth with a bad attitude.

 _Not much change, then,_ she thought, and let the wry humour sustain her.

In the back of her mind, Joran suggested once more that she punch out his lights. She didn’t, though it was tempting. Instead, she just took a few more deep breaths and waited for the urge to pass, for Joran to go back to sleep and Jadzia to remember that she was in control.

“Keep that up, and I’ll show you how ‘pathetic’ I am…” By her own admission, it wasn’t her best comeback, and it was hard to sound intimidating when her was tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, but it helped to quell the urge for violence, and gave her a little strength.

It had the desired effect, too, regardless of how weak she must sound. Ensign Loud-Mouth, or whatever he was called on this side of the mirror, muttered something under his breath, but took a couple of wary steps back, and he didn’t antagonise her any more. She rather suspected the submission came more from fear of what this universe’s Benjamin Sisko would do to him if he upset their trans-universe visitor than any real fear of her, but she appreciated it just the same.

With a concentrated effort, she sat up, looking giddily around and trying to get her bearings.

They hadn’t moved her at all, she realised as she spat out a mouthful of copper-tasting dirt; they hadn’t even bothered to try and make her a little more comfortable. The part of her that just about remembered how to be generous wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt — maybe they were afraid that moving her might cause some damage — but the rest of her was too smart to really believe that was true. They hadn’t moved her because they didn’t think she was worth moving; she could hear the disdain and derision in their voices even more clearly than she could hear the words as the ringing in her ears faded away.

She was a burden here, she realised. Benjamin (no, _Sisko_ , she reminded herself; it was important to keep the distinction in her head) had no doubt brought her here with the best of intentions, but she could tell at a glance that his ragtag band of misfits weren’t nearly as enamoured by her presence as he was. They didn’t want her here. Looking around at her surroundings, she supposed they didn’t think it was worth wasting their resources on a long-shot at helping one sick Trill. Why couldn’t this universe’s Dax just eat some soup like a normal person? Why all the fuss?

Honestly, she couldn’t blame them for their bitterness. She didn’t doubt for a second that her Benjamin would have been just as quick to break the rules if she was the one in trouble, but that didn’t mean her fellow officers wouldn’t be well within their rights to complain about it. The lives of the many over the lives of the few; it was the first and the hardest lesson that anyone in Starfleet needed to learn, but one that Benjamin Sisko had always had a hard time with. Curzon had told him again and again that one day he would have no choice but to leave a man behind, but in all the time Dax had known him, he’d never let it happen without a damn good fight.

This Sisko was similar, it seemed. At the very least, he was willing to risk the welfare of his men — some of them no doubt his friends — for the sake of someone he cared about just a little too much. It was comforting to see that some things transcended even this, even if the Curzon in her still shook its head at the unprofessionalism of it all.

“The decor leaves a lot to be desired,” she grumbled, more to test her ability to talk than out of any need to make the point, and she rubbed the back of her head as she took stock of her health.

She could feel the symbiont in her belly, dazed and miserable, and its discomfort radiated outwards to the corner of her brain that was exclusively Jadzia’s. She was confused, disoriented, like she’d suffered a blow to the head, and as she looked around and recognised a handful of familiar faces among the sea of rabble (a man who looked like Julian Bashir, who she remembered was at the forefront of the fist-fight that had started just before she blacked out, and one who resembled Chief O’Brien, to name just a couple), she wondered if that was why they were talking about symbionts with such disdain. Was that why she had fainted?, she wondered. Because the damned symbiont couldn’t handle a little inter-universe teleportation? She sighed, massaging her temples; some days, she mused bitterly, it was hard to remember why she’d wanted to be joined in the first place.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.” She shivered as she recognised the disjointed mania of the man who would be Sisko. “Is our hospitality not to Madame’s satisfaction?”

“Shut up,” Dax griped, breathing slowly. “I’m here to help, remember? A little common courtesy wouldn’t kill you.”

Careful not to lose her balance, she climbed to her feet, gingerly pressing her hands to her abdomen. She could feel the rhythm underneath the skin, the subtle shifting of the symbiont as it wriggled around, trying to make itself a little more comfortable. It wasn’t happy, she could tell, but it wasn’t hurt either. Most likely, it was just a little fragile after the transport, its sensitive physiology unaccustomed to whatever tricks the people of this side had concocted to let them hop between universes. The scientist in her was curious about that, and wanted to know all the technical details, schematics and all, but the vast majority of her was just worried about her poor scrambled symbiont. It wasn’t the first time she had suffered for the worm’s lack of endurance, and she doubted it would be the last, but she was still embarrassed, annoyed that she could be made so weak by the creature that was supposed to make her so strong.

“My apologies,” Sisko said with an exaggerated mock-bow, putting on a show for his disgruntled men. His charisma was as winning on this side as it was on her own, and his friends spluttered their laughter. “We’ll roll out the red carpet next time.”

Dax, for her part, had turned to roll her eyes at the man who resembled Miles O’Brien. He was a lot rougher around the edges than the good-humoured chief of operations she knew so well; the differences were unmistakable and undeniable, but the likeness was as uncanny as anything else she’d seen.

“I’m guessing you’re the genius responsible for that little experience…” she muttered, cocking her head back in the general direction of Sisko and whatever pocket he’d opted to stash his little transporter device in. “If I were you, I’d spend some time making it a little more symbiont-friendly before you try and send me back home.”

Sisko burst out laughing, and the sound hit a chord in Dax’s chest; she was struck suddenly by how much she missed her Benjamin, the one who only laughed when something was funny, and wasn’t nearly so loud or obnoxious about it, the Benjamin who was warm and honest.

“You hear that, Smiley? She’s been here five minutes, and she’s already throwing out orders! Didn’t I tell you they’d be feisty on that side?”

O’Brien — _Smiley_ — sighed his acknowledgement. “Aye, Captain.”

Though the response came quickly enough, the man himself seemed downtrodden and melancholy, like he was agreeing with Sisko not because he wanted to but because he was afraid of what might happen to him if he didn’t. Dax filed the look on his face away for future reference, in case she needed it.

There was no doubt in her mind by now that Kira was right about this universe’s Sisko, that he was dangerous and unhinged and positively not to be trusted, but she could already tell that Smiley O’Brien was a different story entirely. If Kira and Julian’s mission reports were anything to go by, he had stuck to Sisko after the breakout from Terok Nor because he wanted to inspire some kind of change, to spark a revolution and do something worthwhile. His face told a similar story; this was a man who wanted to do good, but was far better at being a lapdog than an action hero. She could work with that if she needed to, and she was already starting to suspect that it wouldn’t be too hard at all to get this guy on her side if she needed some backup, if things went wrong with Sisko and she found herself in need of an ally.

One thing she already knew for certain: charisma be damned, this Sisko was not in the business of making friends. In truth, that was just fine with Dax; she wasn’t here to make friends, either. She was just here to deal with… well, with herself, apparently.

As if she didn’t have enough identity crises going on at the moment.

“Where is she?” she asked. “You didn’t bring me here to stand around listening to your friends complain about my symbiont. I’m here for a reason, aren’t I?”

“Eager, aren’t you?” Sisko smirked, then winked at his men. “Just like I said, boys. Folks on that side get things done. Didn’t I tell you she would—”

“I’m not here for you,” Dax snapped, cutting him off impatiently.

The point was an important one, and she found that it helped to keep it in the front of her mind, repeating it over and over again in her head as he led her through the clamour of familiar strangers. She wasn’t here for him. She wasn’t here for any of them. She was here for Jadzia.

“She’d better not be,” a voice grated out from the middle of the crowd, and she caught a glimpse of Julian Bashir glaring daggers at Sisko; apparently, this version of Julian was a lot more antagonistic and trigger-happy than the one she knew. “You’ve got enough bloody Daxes already, _Captain_.”

Sisko returned his glare with one of his feral smirks, crude and unhinged. “Ignore him,” he murmured in Dax’s ear; his breath was warm, and entirely too intimate for the situation. “He’s just jealous I got to her first.”

He was just showing off, she could tell, staking a claim to her just because he knew it would irritate Bashir, and being used like that made her feel exposed, uncomfortable in a way she wasn’t used to. Young Jadzia was long accustomed to being pawed by libidinous men (and occasionally women, though they usually had the good sense to be more subtle about it), to say nothing of seven accumulated lifetimes of it, but she was acutely out of her depth in this place, and she felt much more discomfited by the attention here than she would have in the safety of her own universe.

She tried not to think too hard about it, about the vicious looks that Bashir shot them or the smug self-satisfaction that Sisko shot back; the conflict between them was obvious, and she wanted nothing to do with it. She also tried not to think about Sisko’s ominous words — ‘he’s just jealous I got to her first’ — and what they words meant for her, and for her counterpart. Was this universe’s Dax the prize in some kind of power struggle, or was she just a favourite toy? She hadn’t seen many other women in the group of loud-mouthed rebels, and that unnerved her.

Sisko was possessive as he muscled past Bashir and the others, and his hand was heavy where it rested on her waist, inching its way lower, down to her hip, fingers dipping downwards. It was a message to his men, Dax could tell, that she was his too, and she did not like that one bit.

As soon as they were out of earshot, she leaned in and hissed a warning in his ear, voice low and dangerous. “Don’t ever do that again. I’m not here so you can make some macho point to your little friends. I’m here to help your…”

She trailed off, feeling uncertain all over again. What, exactly, was this Sisko’s relationship to his version of Jadzia Dax? Just how intimate were they? And did she really want to know?

“…my woman,” he finished for her, leering helpfully, and she elbowed him sharply in the ribs, hating that word. Joran smiled at the flutter of violence, just a taste, and Dax swallowed him down before he had a chance to tell her to do more. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about me and her. Or me and you, for that matter. I won’t get any ideas. She’d kill me if I even thought about it anyway… even if it’s technically not—”

“You don’t want to finish that thought,” Dax told him coldly. “Or any of the others you’re not doubt entertaining right now.” He gasped, mock-insulted, and she rolled her eyes at the posturing. “Watch your mouth. And watch your hands too, while you’re at it, or you won’t have any left.”

Sisko laughed off the threat, but he took his hand back from her hip just the same. “Oh, you’re just like her!” he cried, delighted. “Two of you in one room! Heaven have mercy on us all.”

Dax glared at him for that, but didn’t dignify it with a riposte. Truth be told, she was starting to feel the tug of nervousness again, the choking tickle of discomfort creeping its way up her throat and holding down her tongue. She wished she’d had the foresight to ask Kira how she’d dealt with this, how it had felt to come face-to-face with another version of herself, someone who didn’t just look just like her but who really was her. She thought about the Intendant, remembering the chilling reports, and wished she had asked Kira how she’d felt when she saw her for the first time. Thinking on it, she supposed it wouldn’t have helped much, but she would have welcomed the input nonetheless.

Self-identity was very important to joined Trill. It was vital that a potential candidate be self-aware, alert and comfortable in their own body and mind, content within themselves before they even thought of taking on a symbiont. Taking on so many new memories, so many old personalities, different people both separate and connected in so many unfathomable ways, tested even the strongest of souls.

Jadzia struggled with her own self-identity, far more than she would ever admit; sometimes she thought that was probably one of the reasons Curzon had washed her out of the initiate program. Now that he was a part of her, it was so tempting to let him take over, or Emony or Torias or any of them, to sit back and bask in their confidence and their accomplishments. Jadzia wanted so badly to leave her mark on the Dax symbiont, to carve out a space for her own name next to those of her former hosts so that one day in the distant future some green young initiate would talk of ‘the great Jadzia Dax’, talking of her the way she herself had talked of Curzon. She wanted so badly to be worthy of the symbiont, worthy of the name Dax, but ultimately, the largest part of her still felt like that stupid, worthless little girl.

It was a constant effort to remember who she was, what she thought and how she felt, to remind herself that she wasn’t Curzon and she shouldn’t want to be. She wished she could blame that on Benjamin, on the friendship they had both wanted so desperately to salvage, but she knew that it wouldn’t be right; the fault was with her, not with him or anyone else. The fault was hers, and so was the effort, that never-ending struggle to remember her own name, her own body, to look into the mirror and realise that the face staring back was her own. It was a constant effort, a never-ending struggle just to be herself, much less to know what that really meant.

With Joran now inside her too, it was a thousand times harder. She still didn’t know how she’d managed to absorb his memories, his thoughts and his feelings, to absorb all of him and not lose herself completely. She had been warned, but the warning had been woefully inadequate; she imagined that must be what it was like to get joined without any training, the sudden overwhelming sense of chaos inside. Maybe she was stronger than she thought she was, to survive as she had, faced with that. Maybe she was even as strong as Benjamin believed her to be. Or else maybe she’d just got lucky.

Either way it wasn’t until much later, back in her quarters on Deep Space Nine when she awoke from the first of countless dreams, that she realised the fight hadn’t ended in the symbiont pools on Trill. Oh, no. It hadn’t even begun.

Every day became an uphill climb, a desperate clamour to sustain her own identity, to remember even Curzon, much less shy little Jadzia who spent most of her time hiding under tables anyway. Every day, it was all she could do to remember that she didn’t really want to kill everyone, that she didn’t really want to hurt and break and destroy, that she wasn’t the one feeling all that hate.

It was shy little Jadzia who locked herself away in the holosuite for hours at a time, who let Joran take over because she was too small to fight him, Jadzia who let him do unimaginable things to holographic Klingons because Dax was too strong let him do them to real ones. It was Dax who imagined what their hearts must taste like, Jadzia who retched to think of it, and both of them who immediately hungered for more. It was Dax and Jadzia, the two of them in this together together, and then, when she was done (when he was done, when they were done), it was the combination, Jadzia Dax, who went back on duty, smiling at the ensigns and answering questions and doing her job like she always did, and nobody knew that she could still smell the blood.

How was she supposed to help this other person, this mirror image of herself? How was she supposed to help another Dax, another Jadzia, when she couldn’t even help herself?

Sisko stopped them outside a little alcove, not too far from where they’d first beamed in. There wasn’t much in the way of privacy in this place, it seemed, because the only protection came in the form of a hanging curtain, loose and not particularly effective. Dax blinked for a moment at the sight, then swallowed down her discomfort; the last thing she needed was for Sisko to pick up on it, to see how uneasy she was and start second-guessing the wisdom of bringing her here in the first place. They were both in enough trouble already.

Maybe that would be better, she thought. Maybe he’d realise this was all a terrible mistake and would send her back where she came from. Maybe she would be on Bajor in less than an hour, catching up with Kira and laughing off how stupid she had been to agree to this madness. Maybe…

But no. This Sisko wasn’t her Benjamin, and she couldn’t be so sure of his actions. Maybe he wouldn’t blame her for being dubious, but that wouldn’t necessarily stop him from getting her out of the way if he thought she’d be a threat, maybe even taking arms against her, or letting his rebel friends do it for him. Dax had known Benjamin Sisko for years, and she had always thought she knew him well enough to anticipate what he would do in any situation. But this man was not her Benjamin, and when she looked at him, she was struck to realise she truly had no idea what to expect.

No, she decided. Best to keep on her guard. Best to play up Curzon’s cocksure confidence, his smugness and his bravado. Best to beat this charismatic loose cannon at his own game.

He didn’t bother to knock, just husked “Jadzia…” from some place deep and low in his throat, seductive and threatening in almost equal measure. The name sent a chill down Dax’s spine, but she didn’t have time to process any more than that, because he was already moving.

The sound of her name — assuming it really was hers — was the only warning the room’s occupant got, less than a second’s worth, and then Sisko was barging through the modesty curtain, shoving it impatiently out of the way and dragging Dax helplessly behind him.

“I brought you a gift, sweetness,” he announced, all swaggering self-satisfaction. “I hope you’ll forgive me for not wrapping it.”

He sounded entirely too pleased with himself, Dax thought irritably, and it seemed that her counterpart felt the same way, because before either of them had a chance to take so much as a step into the room, a hand snapped out from the darkness, lightning-fast and pinpoint-accurate, slapping Sisko across the face with a _crack_ that echoed off the walls.

“That’s for not knocking before entering.”


	6. Chapter 6

“You’re a damn low-life, Benjamin Sisko.” 

If the look on her face was anything to go by, she wanted to do a whole lot more than just slap him. The word ‘castration’ sprung to mind, or at least it would have if Dax’s mind was capable of processing any words at all. But it wasn’t. At that point, it wasn’t capable of doing anything; it was almost more than she could do just to keep from fainting again as she stared into her own bright blue eyes.

It was definitely her. There was no doubt about that. Her eyes, her face, and a predatory grin that she had worn herself a time or two. There was no question about it: this woman was Jadzia Dax, just as surely as she was.

And yet, somehow, for all that they were alike, everything about her was fundamentally different. Dax couldn’t explain how or why, but it went far beyond the obvious surface dissimilarities; she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t resist the urge to stare, to drown in the sight of the woman standing in front of them, so much like the reflection that looked back from the mirror every day, and yet so far away that she couldn’t even begin to count the distance.

Her hair was different, for a start. That was the most obvious thing, the most basic and tangible change. It was shorter, cut rough and ready, sleeker than it should have been in a place like this, but feeling the wear and tear of desperation just the same. It seemed a little darker, too, at least compared to what Dax was used to, but then maybe that was just the lighting, the gloom-touched aura of this place. It was a darker world, a darker universe, and light seemed to be so scarce everywhere; it made sense that even something as plain and unimportant as a woman’s hair would have all the colour sucked out of it. This woman, this dark-haired mirror-image… she was a reflection of herself, that much was obvious, but she was just as much a reflection of this universe, and Dax made a note not to forget that.

It wasn’t just her hair that seemed darker, though, and the cut wasn’t the only thing about her that was rough and ready. Everything about her was dark and troubled and dangerous; everything about her was a shade of this dark place, twisted and chaotic in ways that Dax couldn’t even begin to make sense of. It wasn’t anything physical, at least not anything she could put her finger on; it was more like a feeling or an idea, an intangible _something_ that pricked at every part of her, something she couldn’t really put into words. It was indefinable, but it was also inescapable; as hard as she tried to see beyond it, she couldn’t, and that was the really disturbing part. She was staring at herself, but she wasn’t quite sure what she was really seeing.

Looking at her, seeing the troubled life etched like wounds in the hollows of her own eyes, honing in like a magnifying glass onto those subtle little differences, the small scar on the underside of her jaw where Dax herself had never been injured, the curl of her lip, as savage as it was salacious… it was deeply unnerving, and as she took in all those things, contradictions and mismatches, Dax couldn’t help feeling like she was looking through a pane of shattered glass, one not just broken but crushed into pieces, destroyed in a blind rage. It was fitting, she supposed, given the reason they were both here, but it chilled her to think of it just the same.

She knew that this woman was her, just as she knew that the shattered mess was once solid glass, but she was completely unable to recognise anything at all.

“What would you have me knock on?” Sisko was demanding moodily. “The goddamn rock?”

“That would be a start,” Jadzia — Dax — _Jadzia_ — grunted in response.

Feeling stupefied and stupid, Dax mumbled the only thing she could think of. “She slapped you…”

Sisko rubbed at his jaw, seeming to notice the sting for the first time; he seemed remarkably unruffled by the hand-print colouring the side of his face, and by the twin pairs of dark Trill eyes now staring at him. “That’s how she shows affection,” he explained with a winning smile.

“The hell it is.” Dax tried not to stare at the mouth she’d seen so many times in the mirror as it curled into a cutting sneer. “He’s a show-off and a ruffian, and we’d all be much better off without him.”

She crossed the tiny living space in a single step, grabbed Sisko by the collar, and kissed him full on the mouth; Dax, meanwhile, stood idly by and wished that she hadn’t been right in her suspicions about the two of them and their relationship. She desperately hoped this wouldn’t make things awkward the next time she saw her own Benjamin Sisko and thought of their decades of friendship.

When she was done kissing her captain senseless, her other self didn’t waste a second. Her eyes were bright when she turned back to Dax, looking calm and thoroughly careless, like the incident had never happened at all.

“So,” she said, amicably enough. “You’re me.”

Dax mustered a wan smile. “I suppose I am…”

“Great.”

The other her (Jadzia? Dax? how did this one define herself? was it her place to ask?) countered her smile with a cool shrug, loose shirt falling over her shoulder to reveal rather more collarbone than Dax would normally be comfortable seeing on a mirror image of herself, at least not without buying it dinner first. Did she wear her clothing that well?, she wondered. And did she fill out—

 _No. Let’s not go there._ She lowered her face, uncomfortable, and tried not to blush as she realised that she wasn’t the only one having those thoughts.

“Don’t get any ideas, you lecherous bastard,” the other Jadzia was muttering at Sisko, and he hung his head, seemingly just as abashed as Dax was. “You hear me?”

“I hear you both,” he grumbled, like a child deprived of a favourite toy, then shot a glance back at Dax. “Didn’t I tell you she’d have ’em cut off if I even thought about it?” He turned back to his precious Jadzia, the picture of innocence. “She threatened the same thing just five seconds ago, you know.”

Her other self quirked a curious eyebrow. “Did you, now?” she asked.

Feeling very self-conscious, Dax nodded. “I’m not here for him,” she said again. “I’m here for you.”

Her counterpart ( _Jadzia_ , she decided again) seemed to like that. She shook her head, amused, and favoured Dax with an earnest grin. It was a sharp-edged look, really more like a smirk than a grin, similar in a few ways to the one that Sisko sometimes gave her; there was a feral ferocity to it, all bared teeth and attitude. It was attractive on her, Dax couldn’t help observing, but also utterly disarming.

“Well, then,” she said, stepping right up into Dax’s personal space. “In that case, it looks like you and I are going to get along just fine.” The smirk softened somewhat, a half-smile that dazzled under the dim cavern lights. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

By this point, of course, Dax had no idea what she would or wouldn’t agree to, and so she decided not to say anything at all. She just nodded again, trying not to look as helpless as she felt, and turned desperately back to Sisko in the vain hope of getting them all back on track.

“Can we please…?”

“Yes, yes.” Sisko rolled his eyes, and turned back to his paramour. “They’re all business over there,” he explained. “All about getting stuff done as quick and efficient as possible. Didn’t I tell you—”

“Good,” Jadzia cut in, interrupting. “I don’t want this one sticking around a moment longer than necessary.” Dax made a noise of protest before she could stop herself, mouth already half-open to say _‘I’m just here to help’_ , but her counterpart cut her off before she got the chance, waving a hand and gracing her with another smile. “No offence, lovely. I just don’t trust that chauvinistic bastard to get any work done as long as he’s got two of us to ogle and mistreat.”

“I treat you just fine, don’t I?” Sisko huffed, making a show of rubbing his jaw again as he turned back to Dax. “She’s the one who mistreats me. You saw it for yourself.”

Dax massaged her temples. “Listen,” she said with a sigh. “As endearing as all this posturing is, I’m not here to play peacekeeper between you two.” She gave her counterpart a sympathetic look. “Your friend—” Jadzia snorted her derision at that, and Sisko choked on another half-hysterical giggle. Dax, of course, made a point of ignoring them both. “—says that you’ve been hallucinating, and he… that is, we… that is, he thinks that I might be able to help. And that’s why I’m here: to help you, not to stroke your respective egos.”

“That’s a shame,” Sisko ventured. “My ego could use a good—”

Jadzia slapped him again. “It’ll get a good beating if it doesn’t shut up,” she warned.

Sisko grimaced, pouting. “And I’m the one who mistreats _her_?”

Dax sighed again. “Look. I’ve come a long way for this, and I’m risking a lot just by being here. So, if it’s all right with both of you, can we please focus on the task at hand instead of—” She spread her arms, taking in the two of them. “—this?”

Jadzia put her hands on her hips, expression guarded but turning playful. She seemed almost impressed, albeit reluctantly, by Dax’s attempt at authority in this place that was so new to her, and when she ran an appraising eye over Dax’s body, it was with the same unabashed eagerness that Dax herself often used to unnerve unsuspecting young ensigns with inflated senses of self-importance. Impressed, yes, but with just the barest hint of flirtation; she was long accustomed to fending off looks just like that herself, of course, but seeing such shameless appreciation reflected back through her own eyes, the unapologetic appreciation lifting the corners of her own lips, the smug self-satisfaction shining from her own face… well, it was more than a little disorienting.

“She is cute, isn’t she?” Jadzia said after a moment. “All right, Benjamin, I take it back. You can have her, but only if I get to play too.”

Sisko beamed. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, sweetness.”

Dax, meanwhile, covered her face with her hands. She wasn’t entirely sure what was worse: that she’d just been propositioned by a parallel-universe mirror-image of herself, or that it was the best offer she’d had in months. Either way, she had no intention of letting these people see how quick she was to blush, and so she took the authoritative tack once again.

“Is everyone in this universe as unfocused as you two?” she asked.

“Depends who you ask,” Jadzia said, with another clavicle-baring shrug.

“Or what kind of ‘focus’ you’re talking about,” Sisko added helpfully.

Dax was starting to wish she’d listened to Kira and just vaporised him the moment he’d first materialised on their runabout. The mountains of paperwork would have been painless next to this.

“All right.” Jadzia sighed, exaggeratedly weary, though Dax could have sworn she caught the flash of something like fear in her eyes. “She does have a point. We really should get started.”

“Yes,” Dax said, eager to move on from the awkwardness. “We really, really should.”

For a moment, it looked like the fear in Jadzia’s eyes intensified at the idea, like she was nothing short of terrified. Dax supposed she could understand that; she wouldn’t be too eager to sit down and hear all the things that were wrong with her from a perfect stranger, either, even if the stranger was technically herself.

Even if she was frightened, she controlled herself just like a true Dax, wrapping up the unease and smothering it with false bravado. “Benjamin,” she went on, not looking at either of them. “Don’t you have some Alliance recon to run or something?”

“Not really,” he said brightly. “I’m at your disposal, m’lady.”

“Well, ‘dispose’ yourself somewhere else,” she snapped, unexpectedly harsh, then softened seemingly with a great effort. “Your new friend isn’t here for you; she’s here for me, and neither one of us want you breathing down our necks and distracting us.”

Though she’d only been in this universe a few minutes, Dax could tell that something was off about the exchange, the sharpness of Jadzia’s tone and the fear still flickering behind her face. It took her a moment to realise what it was, though, and when the moment came it struck like a bolt of lightning, hard and fast.

It was a facade. Though she rolled her eyes in all the right places and curled her lip at all the right lines, Dax could tell that she was just going through the motions, saying anything she could think of just to get Sisko out of the room. That much was clear enough, but Dax realised suddenly that it had nothing at all to do with his tendency for distraction, or his apparent infatuation with all things Dax. What it did have to do with, however, was Dax herself. Both of them, in fact.

Maybe she could fool Sisko with the careless brush-off; after all, from what she’d seen, he wasn’t exactly the brightest tool in the box. But Dax was her, or some version of her, and she knew herself better than that. Jadzia could mask the fear all she wanted, cover it over with bravado and arrogance — apparently the staples for everyone in this strange new universe — but that didn’t stop it from existing, and it wouldn’t stop Dax from seeing it. It was easy to fool Sisko with empty strutting and hollow words, not least of all because he was just as empty and hollow as she was, and no doubt hiding just as many latent insecurities. But Dax wasn’t from this universe, and she didn’t play by their rules. She knew what she was looking at, just as surely as she’d seen it in herself when she looked into the mirror after her first hallucination.

She was scared to death.

This Jadzia was terrified, just like Dax herself had been. She was terrified of the hallucinations themselves, of course, because they were frightening and horrible things, but what really scared the hell out of her were the countless questions that came with them, the unknown and the uncertainty, all the reasons why Dax had come here, all the things she needed to know but didn’t want to hear. _What’s happening to me? Why? What did I do wrong?_

That was why she was sending Sisko away, Dax realised. It had nothing to do with his relentless posturing or his bad attitude or his big mouth. No; it was far simpler, and so much more painful. She wanted him to keep believing that she was strong enough, brave enough, good enough to survive on her own. For all that they both must know how badly she needed help, she still wanted him to believe that she could handle it all on her own. She was desperate to keep up that facade of self-control, the appearance of being unafraid and invulnerable. She wanted her Sisko to respect her, just as Dax had wanted her Benjamin to feel that way when it had happened to her.

Against her will, she remembered. She remembered feeling helpless, lying there in the infirmary, wretched and hating herself, feeling all that seething anger and not knowing where it had come from. It would be days before she learned about Joran and discovered that the rage was his and not hers, and the whole time she had felt lost and scared. She remembered looking up into the worried eyes of the friend she’d known for the best part of two lifetimes, and feeling frightened and ashamed. She remembered the awful things she’d said to him, the baseless accusations and the cold and empty threats; she remembered the hurt look on his face as she’d stormed out of his office… and in that moment, staring deep into her own eyes and seeing that same fear and pain on her counterpart’s face, she realised that none of it mattered.

Her Benjamin didn’t care. He didn’t care what she said, what she did, what she accused him of. He didn’t care how badly she crossed the line, or how unjustifiably angry she got. He didn’t about anything at all except the fact that one of his closest friends was going through something he could not understand. He cared that he couldn’t help; he cared that he was helpless to do anything but stand over her and wish he could do more. In its own way, that had been worse than anything she’d said or done. When she lost her temper, she wasn’t herself; ‘herself’ was the frightened young woman lying helpless in the infirmary as Julian Bashir ran test after test while Benjamin held her hand and offered tight-lipped jokes that weren’t funny. That was her. That was Jadzia Dax.

She would have given anything to spare Benjamin the sight of her like that, and she could tell with the intimacy of experience that her counterpart felt exactly the same now.

That was reason enough for her to intervene on her behalf, she decided, and felt her spine straightening.

“You heard the lady,” she said, eyes locked on Jadzia’s.

Sisko rolled his eyes; clearly he was already second-guessing his decision to bring her here. Well, that was just fine with Dax; she was kind of second-guessing it herself right now.

“All right, all right…” he groused, turning to glare at each of them in turn. “I’m going already. You two are no fun.”

When he was gone, and the two of them were left alone, Dax allowed herself the luxury of a heavy sigh. “He keeps forgetting I’m not here to have fun,” she said softly.

Her counterpart gave her another appraising look, the ghost of a smile just lifting the corners of her lips. “That really is a shame,” she said. “Benjamin might be an unrepentant vagabond, but you can’t deny it would’ve been something special.”

Dax found it rather more unsettling than she wanted to admit that the most disconcerting part of that scenario was picturing it with Benjamin. This universe’s Sisko was certainly no-one she wanted any involvement with, and even if she had, there was too much history between Dax and her own Benjamin Sisko, the callow young ensign that Curzon had taken a shine too and the warm familiar commander that Jadzia had come to care about just as deeply. He was her friend, her confidante, and she respected him far too much to ever consider it. Under normal circumstances, Dax would be the first to dabble in the forbidden with a willing participant from a parallel universe, and all the more so with one who happened to share her face, but doing it with Benjamin Sisko, in any incarnation, was simply a step too far.

She didn’t voice any of that out loud, of course. Instead, she just shot a quick glance back at the modesty curtain, rustling in the wake of Sisko’s departure, and took Jadzia’s hand on her own.

“He’s gone now,” she said softly. “You can drop the bravado.”

Jadzia bristled, as Dax had known she would. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” Dax mustered a smile, sad and sympathetic, and gave her hand a pointed but reassuring squeeze. “Your hands are shaking.”

The look on Jadzia’s face as she yanked them behind her back was almost painful. The instant Sisko disappeared, the self-assurance had fallen from her face, and with every moment that passed between them she seemed to sink deeper and deeper into a kind of inarticulate despair. She must have realised that Dax wouldn’t coddle her, and perhaps that was fuelling the obvious anguish on her face. They both knew that something was wrong; that much went without saying. Dax wouldn’t be here at all if that wasn’t the case, and she liked to think that any version of herself would be respectful enough of someone else’s time not to want to waste it.

All of that was reason enough to dispense with the chicanery, and as the truth of the situation seemed to sink in for Jadzia, the self-satisfaction and the swagger that seemed to be the trademarks of this universe fell from her face like a discarded scarf, unwrapped and cast aside, leaving behind only fear and discomfort, huge bright eyes set in a face that was suddenly very pale.

Dax had to dig her feet into the dirt floor to keep from closing what little space remained between them, wrapping her arms around her whole body, pulling her into a hug so tight and so fierce that it would break both their ribs. She wanted to tell her that it would be all right, that she was here and she understood, that she knew what was wrong and that somehow, some way, by some miracle, she would make it better. She wanted so desperately to do all of that, to chase away the pain from those eyes that seemed so much brighter than her own, to stop herself from feeling the sting of it too, fear like the edge of a bat’leth thrust into her chest. She wanted so badly to do something, anything, to make this better through the power of her own shared experience, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything at all until the woman who shared her face admitted that she needed it.

It was harder than she expected, getting her to that point. Even by Dax’s own standards of stubbornness, Jadzia was a cut above. Old habits died hard, that much Dax had learned herself, but it seemed they died even harder in this hope-abandoned place. Though the bravado and the smugness were long gone now, Dax could still feel the distance stretching out between them, an invisible wall of mistrust and doubt, suspicion even through the flirting and the surface-level acceptance. Dax would give anything to tear the words out of her, to rip them from her throat, just as she’d ripped the heart from Kira’s chest in that terrible dream. But it was her own face she was looking at now, and not even Joran’s terrible temper could make her rip out her own throat.

“You don’t have to pretend it’s all fun and games,” she pressed; she tried to sound soft and gentle, to sound like Kira had on the runabout those few hours ago, but it came out rough-edged and raspy. “Not with me.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Jadzia replied, though her voice was tremulous too.

“I’m here for you,” Dax reminded her, not rising to the bait. “I’m here because you need help. We both know that, so let’s not stand on pride and pretend either of us are tougher than we are.”

Jadzia’s expression flickered; for about half a second, the fear was subsumed by hope. Dax could feel the ache in her, so desperate to believe what this backwards reflection of herself was saying. It was almost more than she could do to bite her tongue, to let Jadzia reach her own conclusions, not to push or press too hard. Patience, she remembered; she’d been patient once, before Joran, and she could be patient again. She had to be. Faced with Jadzia, her own features lined and strained with the same struggles that she herself still fought at every turn, she had to be. If she wasn’t, they would both be lost.

At long last, Jadzia took a breath. “You wouldn’t understand.”

To anyone else, it would not have sounded like much. It was just another stubborn deflection, after all. Dax, of course, knew better, and to her, it might as well have been an open invitation. She was this woman, after all, and she shared her thoughts. She’d said those very words herself, more times than she could count, and hearing them from Jadzia’s lips now, she might as well have been saying them again. She knew. She knew because she’d been there. She knew that when Jadzia said _‘you don’t understand’_ , what she really meant was _‘make me believe that you do’_.

But, of course, she couldn’t do that. Flowery speeches and pointless promises only got so far, and they were both beyond that now. They were reflections, both staring into their own eyes, and they knew each other all too well for this to work. Dax could throw down the most articulate and well-formed argument any universe had ever seen, and it wouldn’t do any good; Jadzia still wouldn’t believe her, because she was afraid to. And so, though she heard the plea in the words, though she knew what was really being asked, she just shook her head.

“Maybe I wouldn’t,” she said. “But then again, maybe I would. Either way, don’t you think it would be a shame to bring me all this way and not try?”

Jadzia faltered at that; again, Dax knew that she would. All the empathy in any universe would never be as effective as a guilt-trip, not against a Dax. This Dax had crossed universes for Jadzia, at great risk to herself and probably to this universe’s Sisko as well; that was reason enough for Jadzia to give a little, whether she believed in it or not, and they both knew it.

“I guess so,” she admitted reluctantly. “Benjamin did risk his neck to bring you here.”

“He’s not the only one,” Dax pointed out.

Jadzia’s lips thinned at that, and she bowed her head; she clearly did not like being reminded of that particular fact, and Dax supposed she couldn’t blame her; being in someone else’s debt turned her own stomach sour as well, no matter how justifiable the reason.

“I guess not,” Jadzia conceded after a moment.

It was probably the only victory Dax would get for a while, so she took it with a smile. “So talk to me,” she said; it was an invitation, not an instruction. “Tell me everything, and we’ll see how much I understand.”

They started out slowly. That was to be expected, of course; Dax couldn’t imagine trying to explain everything she felt to a stranger, even one who looked just like her. It had been difficult enough to look up from that bed in the infirmary, to see Benjamin’s face, and Julian’s, to see the concern in their eyes and know that she needed to tell them what she was feeling, all the anger churning inside her, eating away at her insides and leaving her raw and exposed. It had been hard enough to keep from bursting into tears as their faces fell, simple worry dissolving into outright distress on Julian’s face as he checked her isoboramine levels, and the desperate feints of humour from Benjamin that she recognised all too well as his tried-and-tested coping mechanism. Curzon had taught him that: _‘laugh the loudest when you want to cry’_. All of that had been hard enough, and she knew Julian and Benjamin much better than this shattered-glass reflection of Jadzia Dax knew her.

“I’m so angry…” Jadzia confessed at last, a hushed whisper that contained more intimacy than any inter-universe threesome could ever hope to.

Dax remembered that feeling all too well. She still felt it, too, but she couldn’t let her counterpart see that. “Go on,” she said.

“What else do you want me to say?”

She sounded frustrated, closer to upset than aggressive, but something in her hopeless desperation struck a chord deep in Dax’s chest. _G Minor,_ Joran quipped jokingly, and she almost choked.

“Say anything you like,” she said out loud, chasing him away.

Jadzia spread out her arms, helpless and anguished. “That’s all there is. That’s all I have. I’m just angry. All the time. It’s all I feel. So angry, so…” She shook her head. “And I can’t… sometimes I feel like I cant… like I’m…”

She trailed off, as though realising how much she’d admitted in just those few scattered words. Dax tried to smile, to offer some sliver of reassurance even just in her expression, but her features were frozen in the still waters of her own memory, of history and Joran and empathy in G Minor, and all she could do was hold this Jadzia’s hands, hold them tight and squeeze them tighter, and wordlessly will her to see and know and believe that she understood, that she understood everything, all of it and more besides, that it hurt her to know the feeling it just as much as it hurt Jadzia to speak the words.

“And the hallucinations?” she pressed after a beat, and gazed into her own haunted eyes.

“I don’t know.”

It was the truth, Dax could tell, and not just because she remembered feeling the same way, hazy and discordant, unable to make sense of the things that had terrified her on such a fundamental level. She remembered feeling paralysed, sick and shaking with all the fear of a thousand nightmares yet utterly unable to articulate what it was that had so frightened her. It wasn’t even particularly realistic, not next to the dreams that haunted her now, and yet it had stuck in her throat like bad gagh and threatened to suffocate her with inexpressible terror.

“Try,” she encouraged gently.

“I don’t know. They don’t make sense. It’s like… like I remember something, but I don’t know what… like I’m trying to remember, but it’s so raw… so painful…” She closed her eyes and made a tiny choked sound in her throat, so close to a whimper that it stole Dax’s breath and left her wondering if maybe they weren’t so different after all. “It’s like there’s something out there… something terrible…”

“…only it’s not out there at all,” Dax finished for her, very quietly, trembling with mnemonic sorrow. “It’s inside you.”

The sudden clarity in her counterpart’s eyes was startling. She looked almost awestruck, so close to grateful in the second or two before she remembered who she was and who she was dealing with. It was a beautiful moment, if agonisingly short, a fractured heartbeat of relief so potent that even Dax felt it. But, of course, it couldn’t last; Daxes were nothing if not universal when it came to augmenting their own pain, and this Jadzia was no different.

Dax could have predicted the precise second she flipped the switch, remembering that she could not be too appreciative, could not show too much in front of this familiar stranger, remembering Curzon and Lela, the need to be stoic and strong. Just like that, the moment was gone, replaced by that same hardened attitude that Dax used so often herself, that well-worn security blanket of arrogance and false courage.

“Okay…” she said, sounding sullen and indifferent. “So maybe you do understand. Maybe. A little.”

“Maybe,” Dax agreed, hiding her smile. “A little.”

She knew better than to push her when she got like that, of course; she knew how she herself would have reacted in this situation, identical almost down to the second her breath hitched. It was ridiculous, absurd; in so many ways, this aggressive and arrogant young woman was nothing like her. Her hair was too short, her shoulders too tight, and she had a scar where Dax did not. So many differences, all adding up to shape them into two very different people, and yet, at the same time, neither of them could ignore or deny the simple fact that they were the same. And maybe she didn’t know the nuances of this particular Dax, this particular Jadzia, but she knew herself and she knew what she was going through. That was a lot more than Sisko or any of those other rebel lunatics out there knew, and it gave her an advantage. She would play this her way, Dax’s way, and hope for the best.

For a long moment, neither of them said anything at all. Jadzia crossed over to sit down on the bed; it was a strange luxury to have in a place like this, Dax thought, out of place and oversized, but she didn’t say so out loud. She just watched quietly, keeping a respectful distance as Jadzia folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them. She looked very thoughtful, like she was lost inside her own head, and Dax was hesitant to intrude.

That was a feeling she knew well, too, the need to retreat, to spend time alone inside her own head, as close to meditation as she would ever understand. With so many lives and memories and thoughts all vying for attention at the same time, it was difficult sometimes to pick them apart, to tell one from another and hear any of them at all. It was difficult to think through it sometimes, hard to cut through the straight lines and right angles of dead memories and living personalities, and harder still to try and do it when other people kept throwing the balance off with well-intentioned small talk and chatter. Better, Dax knew, to stay quiet and give her counterpart as much time and space as she needed to work through the confusion and chaos bouncing around inside her. She understood, and she would wait as long as Jadzia needed.

She didn’t need very long, as it turned out, and Dax felt her own shoulders relax as Jadzia exhaled a tight little breath and looked up once more.

“Benjamin doesn’t understand, of course,” she murmured, as much to herself as to Dax.

Though the words came out simple and matter-of-fact, a shadow flitted across her face as she said them, as though she was afraid of the confession, afraid of its implications and what it might mean for her and Sisko. Dax felt her heart clench with sorrowful sympathy, though she didn’t know what she could say to make it better.

“I’m sure he—” 

“No.” Her eyes were hollow, and Dax could hear the edge of anger in her voice. “He doesn’t even try. Damn arrogant bastard just thinks I’m being dramatic, that it’s all in my head. He said that, you know. He actually said it.” She rolled her eyes, struggling to come across as dismissive and careless, more annoyed than upset, but Dax could tell she was more bothered than she wanted to let on. “He’s a chauvinist bastard as well as a scoundrel.”

“My Benjamin Sisko isn’t like that at all,” Dax said.

Curiosity sparked like lightning in Jadzia’s eyes at that, and Dax smiled. Like Jadzia before her, she had mostly been talking to herself, suddenly deeply grateful for her Benjamin Sisko, her dear friend, but she was glad nonetheless for the reaction it earned from her other self, smoothing the rough edges of her wounded pride, at least a little, and replacing it with uneasy intrigue.

It was true, too. Her Benjamin was a friend, a confidante and the most trustworthy soul she had ever known, and he would have done anything within his power to make sure that he understood what his old friend was going through. Dax was far from talented when it came to explaining her feelings, but Benjamin would have sat with her for the entire thirty-six hour flight to Trill if that was what it took to get her to make sense. It made her sad but also incredibly grateful to learn that this particular trait did not transcend universes. For all that he was willing to cross universes and find someone who did understand, it seemed that this Sisko simply couldn’t be bothered to do it himself.

“What’s he like?” Jadzia asked softly. “Yours, I mean.”

Jadzia thought for a moment. “He’s one of the most honourable men I’ve ever known,” she said. “And the truest friend I’ll ever have.”

“Is he?” her counterpart asked, like she didn’t really believe it but very much wanted to. “Does he treat you well?”

It was a loaded question, the implication heavy on each syllable, and Dax deflected it as best she could. “It’s not like that,” she explained. “My Benjamin is… not like yours. I mean, our relationship isn’t.” She felt awkward talking about it, even with herself. “Curzon was like a father to him, a mentor… and I think there’s a part of him that looks at me and still sees the old man.”

It was more than just a part, she knew, and truth be told, it still kind of bothered her sometimes. One day, maybe, he would look at her and see just how different Jadzia Dax was from Curzon, and how much more different she might yet be if she stopped clinging to the old man’s legacy. One day, but probably not any day soon. It was hard for non-joined species to understand the changes, physical and psychological, when a symbiont changed hosts; she knew that very well. Benjamin hadn’t been thrown by the physical, at least not as much as she’d expected he would, knowing as she did the sorts of things he and Curzon had got up to with young women just like her… but the psychological, it seemed, still eluded him sometimes.

Honestly, she herself probably wasn’t helping. It was easy to cling to Curzon, to wrap his stubborn hot-headedness and sense of Klingon honour around herself, to shield Jadzia’s weak heart with his strong one. It was easy, even now, to want to be Curzon, and who could blame Benjamin for seeing the old man in her when he was in everything she tried to be?

She thought of her dream, Curzon becoming Benjamin, both so quick to judge her for what she’d done. In the comforting light of whatever passed for day in the depths of the underground, she knew that she agreed with them, that they had taken on the voice of her own conscience. But it hadn’t been so easy to see that at the time. She wondered if the time would come where she really would fall that far, where even Benjamin’s well-meaning counsel wouldn’t be enough to pacify her, where even Curzon’s ever-present influence wouldn’t bring her back from the brink. It was a disturbing thought, and she shuddered.

“Are you all right?” Jadzia asked, noticing.

Dax forced herself to laugh it off. “Of course. I was just thinking… my Benjamin would probably have a heart attack if he ever saw what you get up to with yours.”

“That’s a pity,” Jadzia said with a wicked smile that Dax was already coming to recognise far too well. “We could’ve had a lot of fun, the four of us, don’t you think?”

She was relentless; Dax had to give her that. She recognised the game, though, the deflection and the evasion, the way she was focusing in on pointless little things, redirecting all her energy on flirting and witty banter, on playing the charismatic old Dax instead of the frightened young Jadzia, on anything she could think of to distract them both from the real issue here, the chaos in her head, the fear and the confusion, and the overwhelming rage. Dax knew the game sure enough; after all, she’d played it herself more times than she could count. She swallowed over a suddenly dry throat.

“Curzon certainly would,” she admitted softly. “He always was a bit of a narcissist.”

“He’s not the only one,” Jadzia retorted with a laugh. “I kind of get the feeling you’re not opposed to a little narcissism yourself.”

Dax conceded the point with a self-deprecating shrug. “It’s part of the job description when you’re joined.”

“Oh, I know.” Jadzia laughed, self-deprecating. “Benjamin always says I love myself more than I love him.” Her voice lowered, conspiratorial and very mischievous. “He might be right.”

There was a lightness in her now, a slow-rising enthusiasm that had been sorely lacking until now; it was like she’d suddenly found a kindred spirit, someone who really did understand, not just what she was going through here and now, but everything about her, the fundamental basics of what it was to be Trill, to be joined. For the first time, Dax found herself wondering how long this Jadzia had been away from the Trill homeworld. Did she miss it? Did she find herself longing sometimes for old friends, for her family, for favourite foods or a corner of her childhood home? She herself had all but forgotten most of those things, but it was easy to forget something when there was no danger of it being snatched away. Trill would be there for her whenever she wanted; it wasn’t going anywhere. There was no need for her to commit it all to memory, not when there was no risk of her being torn away. Jadzia, it seemed, already had been. Dax wondered if she’d had a chance to say goodbye before getting dragged into all of this.

It felt strange, she mused, sharing experiences with this woman who both was and wasn’t her. It felt strange to feel her words resonate with everything inside of her, not simply as a Trill but as Dax, as the man who had been Curzon and the woman who was Jadzia. It felt strange to watch the shifting expressions on that face that was so like her own but so different, that rough-and-ready haircut and the glint of danger in eyes turned darker than they should be by this lightless place. Most of all, it felt strange to enjoy it; Dax was here to help, and she was under no illusions of anything beyond that, but there was something inescapably intoxicating about the simple act of being here, of standing in a tiny alcove with an echo of herself, and talking like this. Jadzia was so much more than a like-minded soul, so much more than Kira or even Benjamin could ever be; she was her, and in her Dax couldn’t deny that she was finding something so much deeper than understanding.

“Jadzia,” she said, and marvelled at how unnaturally the name — her own name — fit around her tongue. “I mean… can I call you that?”

Jadzia stared at her, raising a bemused eyebrow. “Well, it is my name,” she replied. “I assume it’s yours as well. We’re not that different, are we?”

Dax shrugged. “I suppose not.” Still, it felt odd to say it. “Look… Jadzia. I could talk for hours about how strange this all is, and how interesting…” Jadzia grinned at that, and Dax recognised just a hint of Curzon in the lifting of her lips. “But that’s not why I’m here. We need to talk about your—”

“I know.” Just like that, the roguish grin had vanished, and in its place was a warning tightness, a vague promise of aggression. Dax recognised the flash of anger in her, the momentary loss of control, and she shivered as she felt an answering twitch of that same violence in her. “I know why you’re here.”

“You really do need to go to Trill,” Dax told her, breathing slowly through her nose and trying very hard to stay calm. “I know your situation is a delicate one, but what you need, you need from Trill.”

Jadzia growled. “That’s too bad,” she said, edgy. “Because it’s not going to happen. Even if I wanted to go back to that hellhole — which I don’t, by the way — it’s not possible. It doesn’t matter how desperate we are, or what I need. None of it matters. Going there isn’t an option. So either think of something else, or go back to your own damn universe, because that’s the situation.”

Dax was surprised; she’d caught a hint of something like nostalgia in Jadzia’s voice a moment ago, a kind of wistfulness as she’d looked at Dax, and had been so sure that she was thinking of home. It didn’t gel with what she was seeing, hearing her dismiss the place so savagely. Was she trying to convince herself it was true so that she wouldn’t miss it so much? Or was she genuinely so bitter?

Either way, she could tell she wouldn’t get an answer; whatever wounds were there, they were deep and raw. So, taking her own advice, she focused on the task at hand instead. “Isn’t there someone you can contact there?” she asked, scrambling for a solution. “Get a doctor brought here?”

Her counterpart stared at her as though she’d completely lost her mind. “We brought you here,” she reminded her, like that explained everything. “It was easier to cross over to a parallel universe than to get help from Trill.” She shook her head in exasperated disbelief, and Dax recognised the helplessness in her, wondering for the first time if perhaps the sharpness came more from Jadzia’s fear than Joran’s malicious influence. “Honestly, genius. Do you really think you were our first choice?”

“Are you really so isolated out here?” Dax pressed.

Jadzia glared at her, growing edgier by the second. “I said it, didn’t I?”

Dax could tell this line of argument wasn’t getting her anywhere; she knew herself well enough to know that she would never dismiss an idea out of hand if there was the least chance of success, and so she trusted that this Jadzia had the same common sense, the same ‘never say die’ attitude. If there was any hope of getting a message to Trill, surely she would have tried.

“Your isoboramine levels are low,” she said, hating that she had to let the easy option go. “You need to get them back up, or you might—”

“How do you know that?” Jadzia demanded, interrupting. Dax almost laughed at the predictability of the question, though she had no doubt she knew the answer perfectly well. She was still clinging desperately to that anger, that aggression; Dax wished she didn’t understand why. “You may be a Trill, but you’re not a doctor. And even if you were, you’ve not even tried to take a look at me. All you’ve done is ask a couple stupid and unhelpful questions about my hallucinations and acted like you understand everything. What makes you so damn sure you know what you’re talking about?”

Dax closed her eyes. She could feel the accusation radiating out from her counterpart, belligerence spilling over into rage, into something that might soon become hate, and then where would they be? She had to stem the tide before it had a chance to become a flood, before it had a chance to become something brutal, but she wasn’t thinking like Jadzia Dax just then. She was thinking like Joran, like a psychopath and a murderer, and though she had reminded herself a thousand times of all the reasons why she was here, the only thing she could think about in that moment was how desperately she wished this other Jadzia — this wannabe, copycat Dax — would stop whining and take a damn swing. At least then she’d have an excuse to hit back.

“I do know what I’m talking about,” she said through gritted teeth, each word coming with great difficulty. _Stay calm,_ Curzon’s voice murmured in her head. _Do this with honour._ “I went through the same thing myself.”

That got her counterpart’s attention; though she must have realised this was the case, it was a different thing entirely to hear the words spoken out loud, and she reacted as though she’d been struck. All the anger seemed to flow out of her, at least for the time being, and the cocky rebel that had swaggered about in front of Benjamin Sisko was gone as well. Suddenly, Dax was looking not at a hardened terrorist or a self-satisfied smartass, but at a young woman scared witless and completely out of her depth. She had never seen herself look so small.

It didn’t last very long, of course, but then Dax didn’t expect it to; they were both Daxes, after all, and neither of them would allow a moment of weakness to last longer than it absolutely had to. She remembered feeling that way too, remembered the terror, the disorientation and the confusion, remembered how it had come as second nature to fight down those feelings, to latch onto the building anger because it made her feel strong and powerful, a warrior instead of a child. It had seduced her, even before she had known what it was; even Curzon would have admitted that there was more honour in temper than cowardice.

She knew that this other Jadzia would be no more able to resist the thrall of it than she herself had been, and so it came as no surprise at all when the momentary flash of weakness vanished as though it had never been there at all, and the aggression came flying back in full force, strong and fierce.

“So tell me something useful, then!” she snapped, almost shouting. “Tell me what’s causing it. If you really know what’s happening to me, you must know why. You have to, or why else are you here? You didn’t come all this way just to mumble a couple of cryptic clues then fly off again, did you? So stop hiding behind your stupid medical bullshit and tell me what’s wrong with me!”

Her hands were balled into fists, shaking at her sides, tremors and spasms that wracked her whole body. Dax’s heart ached for her even as the rest of her still wished that she would just stop yelling and throw a damn punch. It surprised them both that she didn’t; though she kept her fists clenched tight enough to turn the knuckles white, she seemed to be finding it harder and harder to sustain the anger, to overpower the fear and the pain, and when she finally found the strength to speak again, it was in a tiny, tremulous voice.

“Tell me…” she said again, barely a whisper; Dax could hear the unspoken _‘please’_. “Just tell me.”

And so, because she couldn’t stand to see such fear and helplessness in her own face, because it hurt more to see those things than it did to force back the rage surging like wildfire inside of her, Dax did tell her. She swallowed the violence in her throat, doused it in her chest, choked back Joran’s thoughts and his memories, held down all the things threatening to overpower her, and, for the first time since all this started, she let herself become Jadzia again.

She told her how it had started, so much like this. She told her about her own hallucinations, her own anger, the loss of control and the fear every time it happened. She told her about the memories, how slowly they’d resurfaced, fragmented bits and pieces of things she didn’t understand but somehow knew, the discordant echo of words and thoughts and songs she both could and could not remember, the chaos and the confusion, the cavalcade inside her head. She told her how cruel she’d been to her friends, how she’d felt like she was losing herself, how she’d curled up on her bed and cried like a child when Julian informed her that she needed to go home to Trill. She told her as much as she could, until her breath stuttered in her chest and her throat burned. She told her everything she went through, and as she said it she felt it all over again.

It hurt to remember, but it hurt far more to say it. She didn’t realise how weak Jadzia was until she became her once again, scared and small, a child curled up under the table, too frightened to face the monster inside her and too young too understand it, a silly little girl who did not know what anger was, unprepared for the fire and fury that ignited in her chest. How could she have failed to notice? She was Jadzia, wasn’t she? How could she have failed to notice how worthless she was?

By the time she finished, her face was wet and her shoulders were shaking. She was so angry she couldn’t see straight. She heard the intake of breath as Jadzia — the other one, not her; not that silly little girl — opened her mouth to say something, but there wasn’t enough left inside her to process any more words. She couldn’t bear to hear her speak, couldn’t bear to hear her own voice. Not now.

Without thinking, she held up a hand to silence her. Jadzia didn’t blink; she just closed her mouth again and nodded through the film of tears misting Dax’s vision.

Dax took a deep breath, then another, then a few more. She tried so hard to calm the tempest inside her, to silence the screaming in her chest, the hate blazing like flame through her veins, the violence rising in her, but it was futile. Of course it was futile; what did she expect? Silly little girl, how could she possibly think she could control this? How could she possibly think she was strong enough to hold it all inside? How could she hope to overcome it? How could she hope to overcome _him_?

She couldn’t, of course.

And so, she didn’t try.

She just turned away and slammed her fists against the nearest wall, again and again and again, until stone and skin alike were dark and dripping with blood.


	7. Chapter 7

“Feeling better?”

Huddled in a crouch, hands cradled to her chest, Dax loosed a low growl. The surge of adrenaline had well and truly worn off by now, taking with it the lingering vestiges of anger and violence; all that was left now was pain, tempered by humiliation, and that was the sound that wrenched from her. Not rage, not indignity or righteousness, not even violence. Just pain and humiliation. The whimpering cries of a silly little girl.

She had lost track of time, though she suspected she’d been slamming herself against the stone wall for a good few minutes before the exhaustion set in and dropped her to her knees. Jadzia, no doubt afraid of what Dax would do to her if she tried to intervene, had just left her to it, retreating to the other side of the room and watching without a word. Dax supposed she couldn’t blame her for that.

She hurt. Her knuckles were bruised and swollen, still bleeding and tender to the touch, and her lungs screamed; she felt worse now than she had after four hours spent fighting holographic Klingons in the dead of night without a break. Honestly, though, she didn’t mind that. Joran enjoyed pain of all descriptions, and his own as much as anyone else’s; she could feel the sweet intoxication of his hunger dulling the worst of it, soothing the pulse and throb. Besides, the physical pain was nothing next to the humiliation of having lost control.

She felt worn out, drained and exposed. Her mind was on edge, and for the last two weeks her temper had constantly felt like a fuse being lit and extinguished over and over again, sometimes with just seconds to spare. She’d lived with that feeling almost every waking minute, a near-permanent struggle against herself, but this time, instead of being snuffed out a second too early, the spark had been extinguished a second too late.

That difference, tiny as it was, was cataclysmic. Losing her temper was frightening enough, Dax knew, but losing her control was a thousand times worse. She hated herself for letting it happen, hated that she hadn’t been able to stop it from happening, and hated most of all how completely she’d lost herself when it did. She hated the nonsense smears of blood on the wall, imperfect reflections of the drying stains painting her knuckles. Everything in this damned universe was an imperfect reflection of something else, it seemed, and she huffed a deranged little laugh.

Jadzia was laughing too, seemingly just as deranged as she was, and though Dax didn’t have the strength to turn around and look at her, she knew exactly why. In truth, she would probably have done the same if their positions had been reversed, so overwhelmed by relief that she wasn’t the first one to break, the first Dax to lose control, so blind with joy that she was not the first one to show the depth of her weakness… she would have laughed as well, and kept laughing until her imperfect reflection turned those bruise-bloody fists on her face and made her shut up.

And yet, though she did understand Jadzia’s relief, and the giddy self-satisfaction that went hand-in-hand with it, that understanding did little to ease her own misery, and when a heavy hand fell on her shoulder, support mingling with amusement, it was all she could do not to pull away and storm out. She wanted to be done with this place. This bedroom, this cave, this universe; she had only been here five minutes, and already she wanted to be free of it. She was tired and humiliated, and in a great deal of pain, and she just wanted to go home.

“Feeling better?” Jadzia asked again, a little softer.

Dax growled again, more like a mouse than a lion. “I’m fine,” she said in a voice gone rough and raw.

“Oh, I can see that.”

A sigh, soft and breathy and very close to her ear, and Dax fought the urge to lean into the body that pressed against her back, to close her eyes and rest for a moment. Not here. Not in this place, and not with her. Not when she knew that she would see all her own conflict shining back at her if she did turn around. Not when it was her own body, her own breath; not when it was her. She would not rest here, and she would not rest with her.

And so she fought instead, feeling her muscles go tight, tension where a moment ago she had been too exhausted to remember what tension was. She fought, and let the will to fight lend her strength. 

“Leave me alone,” she said, too tired to be angry but too angry to indulge the tiredness.

To her surprise, Jadzia did. Well, in body, at least; the familiar contours suddenly disappeared from behind her as she leaned back, the meagre support dissolving, and her voice turned deep and thoughtful.

“Is this what I have to look forward to?”

More than anything in the world just then, Dax wanted to say ‘no’. She wanted to turn around, to look herself right in the eye and say that no, this was her own weakness, her own failing, that the blame was on her and nobody else, that Jadzia was stronger, that she would be all right, that she could be strong where Dax was weak and lost. That was why she’d come here, wasn’t it? To meet this other version of herself, to do whatever it took to spare her from the same fate that she’d endured herself, to make damn sure that there was a Dax out there somewhere who didn’t succumb to Joran and his seething violence. It hurt, so much more than the blood and bruises on her hands, to know that she couldn’t do it.

“I don’t know,” she said; it was the only compromise she could offer, the only way to keep from lying without having to tell the terrible truth: _‘yes, I am you, and if you’re not careful I’m what you will become’_. “I just know that you’d have a better chance of not having to look forward to it if you’d just go back to—”

“No.” 

Dax acknowledged with a stiff nod and a heavy sigh, and tried to think of something else.

She wished she could remember more of what they’d told her when she went back to Trill, what the doctors and experts had said about her condition and what it meant for her as a host. She’d paid attention, at least as well as she could, but at the time she hadn’t been in any condition to absorb very much of anything. She’d been confused and frightened, and very unwell; her isoboramine levels had been dangerously low, and she’d barely recovered from neural shock. When they talked her through it, rushed and worried, she could barely string a sentence together. How was she supposed to absorb so much new information in a state like that? Who could?

If Julian were here, he might have a better idea of what to say, what to do, or at least what to suggest, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t here, and neither was Benjamin or Kira or any of them. It was just her, just Dax, and the only thing she knew with any kind of certainty was that she would not allow another version of herself to fall prey to those violent urges. There had to be something she could do. There had to be something.

Her counterpart shifted a little, moving around to rest on her haunches in front of Dax. She took great care to crouch as close to the floor as she could, keeping Dax above her and looking up with a steady, stoic expression. Dax was grateful for that, for the way she ducked down, glad that she could still be the taller one, in even if she wasn’t exactly any bigger.

“Can’t you…” Jadzia took a breath, blithely hopeful. “Can’t you just… I don’t know, talk me through it or something?” 

“Talk you through it?” Dax echoed, and tried not to laugh at the absurd simplicity of the idea. “It’s not like learning to pilot a runabout, you know…”

“I know.” Her jaw clenched, but her eyes remained clear. “But you said it’s to do with repressed memories or something. Can’t you just bring them out by telling me whatever it is I’m supposed to remember? Can’t you talk me through what I’m supposed to know, and help me remember that way?” There was a kind of desperation in her, a childish plea for things to really be that simple. “We’re both Dax, aren’t we? We’re the same person, more or less. Surely our memories can’t be that different.”

“You’d be surprised,” Dax said softly.

“Maybe,” Jadzia replied, almost feverish now. “But what could it hurt to try? Tell me about him… this ‘Joran Belar’.”

Dax flinched at the name. It was one thing to talk about her own experiences, to remember her own struggles as the anger and the hallucinations had manifested in her. It was one thing to talk about the symptoms, to treat the whole thing like a sickness, like a disease that had gone into remission. But to tap into the very thing that frightened her? To tap into him, into Joran… to dig into that part of herself, and to do it willingly? That was something else entirely.

She didn’t want to do it. That was the plain and simple truth. Jadzia might be right, for all she knew; maybe it would help her to grasp at the things she couldn’t reach. Maybe it would do for her what a dip in the symbiont pools had done for Dax. Maybe it would solve all of Jadzia’s problems, do everything Dax had promised herself she would do, save her from turning out like she had. Maybe. But she still didn’t want to do it.

She didn’t want to bring out those horrible memories, the rage and the violence and all the things she still couldn’t quite hold in check, even now. Even just talking about the whole thing as a series of symptoms, clinical and detached, had been enough to shatter her control, to ball her fists and pound the wall. Even just talking about Jadzia’s struggle had done that. Talking about Joran’s life, his memories, his feelings, all the things that had driven her to this point? That would end her. She knew it.

“You remember, don’t you?” Jadzia pressed, oblivious to her inner panic. “You remember who he was, how he lived, what he did when he was joined to Dax. You remember everything.” 

_That’s the problem,_ Dax wanted to cry. _Don’t you understand that?_

But, of course, how could Jadzia understand what she didn’t know? How could she understand how heavily Joran’s memories weighed on Dax when she couldn’t remember them herself? Dax could see the strain deepening the lines of her face as she leaned in closer, the ache and the anguish darkening the shadows under her eyes. She could see the frustration and the fear, the shame and the misery; she could see everything, but it was all undercut by that ever-present anger, the rage and the simmering hate that she could not make sense of.

Dax felt it in herself, too, the echo of what she saw in Jadzia. Fury, hot and hungry, rising in both of them again, and they turned away from each other at the same time, catching their breath in perfect sync.

“You know everything I need to know,” Jadzia went on, breathing hard; Dax could hear the shudder in her voice and wondered if it was more fear or anger this time. “So why won’t you just tell me?”

“It’s not as simple as that.” It was almost a plea.

“That’s bullshit.”

Jadzia’s eyes flashed, bright but very dangerous, and Dax found herself flinching backwards almost by reflex. If it did come down to a fight, she had no doubt that she would be the victor, even with her knuckles almost too painful to use, but she really didn’t want it to go there. Oh, a part of her was still aching for it, veins pulsing and fingers itching, but the part of her that was still rational — Lela, probably, or else the shy Tobin — didn’t want to light that particular powder-keg. Not with both of them so raw with Joran’s rage.

“Jadzia…”

“Don’t ‘Jadzia’ me. You don’t have a damn clue if it’s as simple as that or not. And you don’t care, either. You just don’t want to deal with it.” She folded her arms. “You’re scared. You’re scared of that maniac inside your head, and you’re scared of having to deal with his memories. You keep saying you came here to help, but apparently that doesn’t count if you have to suffer too.”

“That’s not fair,” Dax said, but the words rang hollow.

“I think it is.” Jadzia’s eyes were cold as ice now, dark as the blood smeared across the stone. “You’re scared.”

Dax bristled, but she couldn’t deny it. Maybe if it was Kira or Benjamin, but not herself. She could never lie to the mirror.

“Even if I am,” she said carefully, “it doesn’t matter. Until your isoboramine levels are stabilised, we’re in no position to try anything. If you won’t believe I’m here to help, at least believe me when I say you don’t want to deal with those memories when you already risk rejecting your symbiont.”

This time, it was Jadzia who stiffened. “Maybe I should do that, then,” she snapped. “Just reject the damn thing and be done with it.”

“You’d die,” Dax reminded her, as if she didn’t know. “And so would the symbiont.”

Jadzia opened her mouth, but Dax raised a hand to silence her before she had the chance to to say it, bruises facing outward so her counterpart could see them clearly, as much a warning as anything else. It was just the anger, she knew. It was just the unconscious influence of Joran Belar twisting her thoughts and her words, making her consider things that she would never dream of if she was in her right mind. During some of her worst moments, right after she started to remember, even Dax had found herself almost wishing she could rip the symbiont out of her and relish the sweet release of death it would bring. Anything to keep from drowning in all that hate.

She climbed stiffly to her feet, turning away and giving Jadzia a moment to wrestle with her thoughts. How desperate she must be feeling, to say such things aloud, to go against everything she knew and believed. Risking suicide was one thing, but risking the death of a symbiont was the worst crime a joined Trill could commit. Jadzia needed to remember that, and Dax gave her the distance she needed to do that.

She stared at the wall for a few moments, the smear of blood left behind to mark her loss of control for all to see, stone stained with shame, and tried not to think at all.

Truthfully, though, she was just playing for time. She felt out of her depth, lost and helpless and confused, and the despair radiating from Jadzia lashed at her back like a whip. For the first time since she materialised in this dark and twisted universe, she wondered if it was a mistake, if maybe Kira was right after all. What could she have possibly hoped to achieve? She wasn’t a doctor, and she didn’t know the first thing about any of this. The only weapon — no, this place had enough weapons — the only _medicine_ she had was herself, Jadzia’s experiences and Joran’s memories, and most of the time she couldn’t even tell one from the other. She wished Julian was here, or Benjamin, or Kira, or even Quark. Someone she could recognise beyond the surface, someone she knew. Here she was, surrounded by familiar faces, and yet she felt completely alone.

A hand on her arm jolted her back to the present, to the issue at hand, and she turned to look into her own familiar face. Jadzia was looking at her in much the same way that Benjamin often looked at a particularly inexperienced ensign, like she was young and stupid and needed to be told exactly what to do. She looked irritable and impatient, and Dax tried not to wonder if she was perhaps a little disappointed that rejection wasn’t really an option.

“All right,” she said, gritting out the concession like an order. “So stabilise my damned isoboramine levels, and then talk me through it.”

“And how, exactly, do you propose I do that?” Dax shot back, hoping that the tension in her shoulders was just the discomfort of being too still for too long. “You said yourself that getting to Trill isn’t an option, so unless you happen to have a supply of benzocyatizine just lying around, there’s really not much I can do.”

Jadzia snorted her disgust. “Does it look like we’d have something like that ‘just lying around’? We don’t even have coffee!”

 _No wonder everyone’s so bad-tempered around here,_ Dax thought.

Still, though, Jadzia’s expression was already starting to shift, annoyance undercut by something a little colder and a lot more cunning. Dax’s spine gave a warning twitch, and she took a couple of automatic steps back. She wondered briefly if she ever got that look on her face, that unnerving expression that said _‘I’m concocting a dangerous plan, and you’d better run like hell’_. She probably did; it would certainly explain why Benjamin looked at her sometimes like she was a snake readying to swallow him whole. Suddenly, she understood his reticence entirely too well; whatever Jadzia was thinking Dax could already tell that it was something she wasn’t going to like at all.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, wishing she didn’t sound so uneasy.

“Nothing,” Jadzia murmured, seeming to speak more to herself, as though voicing her thoughts out loud to give them some cohesion. “But… say we could get some…”

Dax blinked. “Coffee?”

Jadzia stared at her as though she couldn’t believe anyone could be quite so stupid and still know how to breathe. “Benzocyatizine,” she said. “Did you leave your brain on your side?”

“I’m starting to think so,” Dax admitted.

She wasn’t sure she liked the direction this conversation was heading in, and not least of all because she had no idea whether benzocyatizine would do them any good in the first place. All the benzocyatic regimens on Trill hadn’t been enough to keep her from going into neural shock, had they? And they sure as hell hadn’t prepared her for the hell of letting Joran’s memories resurface. Still, it was better than nothing, and at least it distracted Jadzia from the idea of ‘talking things through’, so she indulged her with a curious look.

“How?” she asked. “I thought you said we were cut off from Trill out here.”

“We are,” Jadzia confirmed quickly. She chewed her lip, looking thoughtful and suddenly very young. “But that doesn’t mean we’re cut off from everything. If you were willing to stick your neck out a little…”

Dax grimaced at that, massaging her temples. “Don’t you think I’ve stuck my neck out for you enough already, just by being here?”

Jadzia flinched, suddenly hyper-defensive. “Feel free to leave if I’m such a damned burden,” she muttered viciously. “Bringing you here was Benjamin’s idea, not mine. I didn’t ask for—”

“Cut that out,” Dax snapped, a little sharper than she’d intended. “You know I’m not going to just walk out and leave you to go through this alone.” She didn’t like that she was being pushed into admitting it, though. “What do you want me to do?”

Jadzia met her gaze, expression even; the aggression had mostly bled out of her now, but so too had the little girl, the frightened young thing that looked so small and helpless. When she spoke, it was with a straight face and a steady voice, like she’d been practicing the words for days, even though Dax knew she must have only just thought of it.

“I thought you might take a trip to Terok Nor.”

Dax sucked in her breath. What scant details she’d gleaned of this place from Kira’s and Julian’s reports were hazy at best, but there was no forgetting that name, the same name their Deep Space Nine had once held under the authority of the Cardassians, or what it stood for on this side of the mirror.

“Are you insane?” she demanded.

“Not at all,” Jadzia replied, quite calmly. “I used to do good work for the Intendant, you know. Well, before Benjamin lost his balls and grew a conscience in their place, and dragged the rest of us bleeding hearts down with him.” She turned away, as though that was something to be ashamed of, then heaved a confidential-sounding sigh. “Just between you and me, I probably should have stayed where I was. Easy money, easy living, and why should I care about Benjamin and his silly little Terrans?”

“Freedom is important,” Dax said carefully.

“To them, maybe,” Jadzia shot back. “But I already had my freedom. I’m no damned Terran. Why should I care what happens to them? I had a warm bed before all of this. A warm bed, three square meals, and a well-stocked ship. I came and went as I pleased, and as long as the Intendant got what she wanted, so did I.” Dax opened her mouth to speak, but Jadzia waved a dismissive hand. “Anyway. My point is, if you go crawling back to that deluded little tyrant in my place, and tell her how desperately you’ve missed her, she’s just about stupid enough to believe you.” She smiled. “She always did let her ego drive her common sense.”

That much, at least, gelled with what Dax remembered from Kira’s report. “So I’ve heard,” she said.

Jadzia grunted her acknowledgement. “You might have to get your hands a little dirty, of course,” she warned, making the implication clear. “But if you’re anything like me, I’m sure you’ve done worse for less.”

She was probably right about that, Dax thought wryly, though she wouldn’t admit it out loud.

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy,” Jadzia added, moving swiftly on. “But that woman is the most self-involved narcissist anyone could ever hope to meet. Throw enough compliments her way, and she’d do anything for you. And she’s got more than enough contacts to get hold of your precious benzocyatizine.”

“ _Your_ benzocyatizine,” Dax reminded her pointedly.

Jadzia waved a hand. “I’ve been careful to keep my head down. Don’t want to burn my bridges like Benjamin burned his. You understand…” Dax wasn’t sure she did, but she didn’t say so. “As far as I know, the Intendant has no idea I joined his little band of outlaws. So even if she does have the common sense to dig a little deeper — which is unlikely enough — she wouldn’t uncover anything incriminating anyway. You’ll be back with us in no time, safe and sound.”

Dax still wasn’t sure she approved of any of this, and she wasn’t afraid to voice her qualms. “And why, exactly, does this little venture fall on me?”

Jadzia shrugged. “I’d go myself,” she said in a low purr, “but Benjamin can be so protective when he thinks I might get in trouble…”

Dax snorted. “Protective? More like ‘possessive’, if you ask me. But then, your relationship is none of my business.”

“No, it’s not,” her counterpart shot back, angry once more; she was even quicker to anger than Dax herself, it seemed. “So keep your nose out of it.”

Dax looked down, and saw that once again their tempers were mirroring each other. Both of their fists were balled, white-knuckled, at their sides; the only difference between them was the blood and bruising on Dax’s and the dirt under Jadzia’s nails. They were both breathing hard, too, the tension between them palpable on the air. It was Jadzia who pulled herself back first, fingers unclenching one at a time; Dax supposed it was because she was still blessed with the benefit of having Joran mostly submerged; she rather wished she still had that ignorance herself.

“I’m sorry,” she forced herself to say, struggling to unclench her own fists. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Damn right,” Jadzia huffed, then shook her head. “But that’s not the point. You’d know better than I do how much of that stuff to ask for. And, hell, you know what it does better than me, too. I’ve not been home in…”

She trailed off, looking very sad, and Dax respected her sorrow by not interrogating her this time.

“Really?” she asked instead. “That’s the excuse you’re running with? You want me to risk my life going to Terok Nor in your place, just because I know what I’m talking about a little better than you do?”

Jadzia shrugged, though there was a tension in her shoulders that hadn’t been there before, even when she was angry. “Honestly?” she asked, too forcefully cheerful. “I just want to take bets on how long it’ll take before you lose that temper of yours and sock the Intendant right in her smug face.”

As cute as the line was, it was as much an excuse as any of the others. Dax could see the conflict playing out behind those eyes, eyes that looked so much like her own, eyes that gave away the same tells no matter how hard either of them tried to conceal them. She could see as surely as if she really was looking into a mirror that it was so much more than any of the things she’d said, that it was nothing to do with an over-protective lover or their respective knowledge about benzocyatizine. It was something else entirely, something that Jadzia was ashamed of, and Dax narrowed her eyes, suspicious and a little worried.

“There’s something else going on here,” she said, ignoring the faux-wounded look on Jadzia’s face, deliberately designed to bait her. “Don’t try to deny it. You can’t fool me like you can fool those idiots out there.” She cocked her head towards the curtain, then levelled Jadzia with a sober look. “You’re me, remember? I’d never willingly sit on the sidelines and send someone else out to do my dirty work for me, especially when I knew they risked getting hurt. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that… and I’d bet anything that you’re the same way.”

Jadzia scowled, but didn’t deny it, and Dax felt her argument pick up speed. “So what?” she snapped.

“So why?” Dax frowned, trying to figure it out. “Are you afraid of her?”

“Afraid of the Intendant?” She laughed, but it was a little too loud and a little too shrill. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Well, you’re definitely afraid of something…”

Though she said it mostly to herself, mulling over her responses, the tiny flicker on Jadzia’s face was all the confirmation Dax needed. She didn’t volunteer an explanation, but Dax didn’t really expect her to; that little flicker alone was more than enough to convince her that this was a subject worth pressing, and she did so with ruthless efficiency.

“Look, if you expect me to get my hands dirty on your behalf, don’t you think I have a right to know why I’m doing it? Wouldn’t you expect the same thing from me if I was in your shoes?”

Jadzia looked away, and Dax saw a bead of blood form on her lip as she bit it; the urge to do the same rose up hot and hungry inside her, but she choked it down and cracked her knuckles instead. The pain was more brutal than biting her lip would have been, but it wasn’t nearly as satisfying. She swallowed over a rising curse, and kept her eyes locked on Jadzia as she stared down at the floor.

“You already know what I’m afraid of,” Jadzia mumbled, sounding thoroughly miserable. “You told me so yourself.”

That was all it took, and suddenly Dax did know, as surely as if she had said the words. “You’re afraid of your hallucinations,” she said, very quietly. “You’re scared that you’ll start hallucinating while you’re on Terok Nor.”

Jadzia couldn’t meet her eyes. Dax respected her unspoken request for space and distance, knowing that she would have needed it just as badly if their positions were reversed; she wheeled away, pacing the tiny space and shaking out her throbbing hands, pain on pain on pain. She could hear Jadzia’s breathing, different from her own only in the way it hitched in her chest every now and then, like she was fighting down panic (or possibly just another screaming bout of anger). It was strangely comforting, even just a subtle difference like that, and she let the stuttering staccato rhythm fill the silence and the space between them.

“Can you tell me it won’t happen?” Jadzia asked after a few long moments, and Dax noted that she still couldn’t look at her. “Can you promise me it won’t?”

Reluctant, but unable to deny it, Dax shook her head. “No,” she admitted, hating herself for it. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Then I’m ‘afraid’ I can’t go.”

The carefully-woven shroud of arrogance was an effective one, and it probably would have fooled anyone else in either of their universes, but it didn’t fool Dax. How could it, when they were one and the same? She could practically taste the fear rising like bile in the back of Jadzia’s throat, the regret and the shame, self-loathing and pain to know that she was too much of a coward to do her own dirty work. She felt it, just as she would have felt it if she’d been in Jadzia’s place, and it stung behind her eyes as though the emotion were truly hers. Maybe they were more alike than she thought, she and this shattered-glass reflection of herself, because she could tell that she had got the measure of it perfectly: Jadzia didn’t want to ask Dax to do this any more than Dax herself wanted to do it, but she was so scared she could barely speak.

The realisation changed everything, and it brought a dozen fresh ones in its wake. Jadzia wasn’t just ashamed of herself, she was furious. It was driving her crazy to know that she couldn’t do this for herself, that she couldn’t do anything at all for herself. She felt impotent, Dax knew, so paralysed by fear and anger and confusion, laid so low by these half-remembered non-memories that she had to crawl to a stranger from another universe for help… no, worse still, that she’d had to commission Sisko to do the crawling for her.

That alone was bad enough, but now there was this as well. This, the one task she might once have been able to do on her own, a task that required stealth and bravado and cocksure arrogance, exactly the kind of task that anyone named Dax would leap at. It was perfect, tailor-made for someone like Dax, or Jadzia, and yet even this was a stumbling block she couldn’t get past. Even now, she had to duck her head and defer to someone else to do the job for her. Even now, she wasn’t good enough.

No wonder she was so aggressive about the whole thing, Dax thought. No wonder she was so angry, even without Joran’s whisperings. The helplessness alone was killing her.

Though she knew it was a bad idea, Dax let herself think back. She remembered her own hallucinations, how terrifying they were and how shaken she was afterwards, disturbed not just by their content but by the visceral emotions that went with them, injections of pure adrenaline, fear and hatred as sharp and potent as any hypospray. She remembered feeling dizzy and disoriented, stumbling and bracing against the nearest solid surface, unable to focus when she heard the sound of her name, waiting for her vision to clear and all those twisted feelings to subside, waiting and waiting… but of course it never happened.

She thought about Benjamin, her Benjamin, and about Julian. She remembered how eager they were to help, how willing to drop everything for her, how Benjamin had insisted that they take the Defiant instead of a runabout because it was so important to them that they get her to Trill as quickly as possible.

She thought about Kira, too, remembering with a twinge of sorrow the look on her face when they left for Trill. _“Deep Space Nine can’t run itself, Major,”_ Benjamin had told her with a sad little smile, _“and I for one will rest easier knowing it’s in your capable hands.”_ Kira had nodded, ever the dutiful first officer, but Dax had seen the frustrated helplessness in her eyes, anger at being left behind even if she did understand. She had wanted so much to go with them, to be there for Dax just as Benjamin and Julian were, even as she knew that the station was the best place for her, that staying was helping too, in its own little way.

They had all been so eager, so willing to do whatever it took. They would have turned the galaxy upside-down if they thought for a second it would do any good. Benjamin, Julian, even Kira; there was nothing they wouldn’t have done for her. Dax felt her eyes sting again at the thought, and couldn’t do anything to hold back the drop of moisture that splashed onto the bloody bruises of her knuckles, salt itching and stinging unpleasantly in the tender wounds.

How would she have coped in a place like this, she wondered, and the thought put a sour taste in her mouth. How much worse would those horrible hallucinations have been without that support network to hold her hand while she rode them out? How much more unbearable would they have been without her friends and her home, without the soul-deep knowledge as she came back to herself that she was safe among these people? How much more frightened would she have been without Benjamin’s reassuring smile, or Julian’s bedside manner, or the fierce devotion blazing behind Kira’s eyes as she hugged her goodbye?

This universe’s Benjamin Sisko was nothing like hers, and as intimate as it seemed her counterpart was with him, Dax could tell they weren’t exactly the type to talk ‘feelings’. Sisko, this Sisko, was dangerous and ruthless; he was a savage, on the cusp of starting a fight all the time. What kind of support network was that for someone dancing with a creature like Joran Belar?

Jadzia, her shattered-glass reflection, seemed to be rather the same way most of the time, even without her current situation; at least in that, Dax supposed the two of them were well-suited to each other. No doubt they got along well enough when they were both having a good day, but there wasn’t much for them outside of the physical, the raw animal magnetism of it. Certainly, Jadzia would find no confidante in Sisko, no kindred spirit to confess her fears to, no sanctuary for her weakness. It was a miracle she’d let enough of it through that Sisko had recognised the need for help in the first place.

Little wonder this Jadzia was so hardened, she thought sadly. Little wonder she tried to make excuses and cover up her fears. Little wonder that she couldn’t even trust the woman who shared her face, that she couldn’t even bring herself to open up in front of the one person in two universes who truly did understand her. Under the same circumstances, Dax couldn’t help thinking she wouldn’t be half so well-adjusted.

“How long?” she heard herself ask, blurting out the question before she realised it was aloud.

Jadzia blinked, annoyed, and Dax could tell it was a relief to have something new to spur her ire rather than her fear. “What are you talking about now?”

“How long have you been dealing with it?” Dax pressed with a sigh. “The hallucinations, the anger, all of it. Everything. How long were you going through it before you told him?”

Jadzia turned her face away. Dax could hear the catch of her breath, and knew that she was fighting down tears. Dax watched her profile, shadows falling about her face; the lines should have made her look old, wizened and weary and worn down, but they just highlighted the sickly cast of her skin and the fear glowing half-silhouetted in her eyes. She looked impossibly young for someone who had lived so long.

“Long enough,” she said at last, a confession that gave away so much more than any real span of time ever could.

Dax didn’t push her any further. She would elaborate in her own time, Dax could tell, once she found the courage still smouldering under the fear, but she needed to get there by herself. She found it difficult too, sometimes; it was a unique kind of challenge in moments like this to dig down deep and pull out the parts of her that were uniquely Jadzia, to push past the other hosts, their memories and personalities, and really latch on to what she herself was feeling, to learn and understand how much of any given moment was truly her own.

That was something only a joined Trill could truly understand. It was one of the reasons why Kira chastened her so often for ‘bottling things up’, for not being open enough with her own troubles even when she was so good at nurturing other people’s. It was why she’d dragged her to Bajor on a silly pilgrimage rather than let her continue beating herself up day after day in the holosuite. Being joined was a gift, and one that Dax was forever grateful for, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a challenge; sometimes it was so difficult she wasn’t sure if she would even see out the day. Those days were few and far between, but moments like this were not so rare at all, moments when she needed to step back, when she needed to catch her breath and pick apart what was really going on inside her head, what was what and who was who.

Without a word, she moved in, closing the space between them in a couple of steps, and without hesitation pulled Jadzia into her arms, holding her tight. Jadzia didn’t flinch like she expected; she melted into the embrace, head resting on Dax’s shoulder, and sighed very deeply.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she murmured, the words breathed out like secrets against the curve of Dax’s jaw. “But Benjamin is not exactly a sensitive man. He doesn’t have the patience, or the time, to deal with this kind of thing.” The bitterness in her tone was unmistakable, but Dax didn’t push her to elucidate. “We’re fighting a war out here. If it’s not fatal, it’s not important. If you’re strong enough to stand, you’re strong enough to pick up a weapon and use it. It’s as simple as that.”

It wasn’t, though, and Dax knew it. Jadzia pressed her face to her cheek, cool on cool, and Dax suddenly realised just how long it had been since she had touched another Trill, how much the contact felt like home.

“But it’s not really,” she said, very quietly. “Is it?”

She felt the flutter of motion, warm air pressing between them as Jadzia shook her head. “He thought I was just being short-tempered. He didn’t understand, and he didn’t want to listen when I told him I didn’t feel right. It was getting in the way, he said. It was distracting both of us from what was important, from his damned rebellion, and what was the point in trying to talk to him about something that I couldn’t even really explain anyway?” She made a small miserable sound, a whimper choked by a growl. “How the hell do you explain something like that? How the hell do you make them understand?”

Dax held her a little tighter. “You can’t.”

“You can’t,” Jadzia agreed. “I couldn’t even make it make sense to me, and I sure as hell couldn’t make it make sense to him. So in the end I just stopped trying. It wasn’t worth fighting over. It wasn’t worth making him angry.” Her voice shook as she said it, and Dax knew why without having to hear the words.

“Because that made it worse,” she said quietly. “When he got angry, you got angry.”

Jadzia nodded. “You’ve seen him. When he gets angry, it’s like he explodes, and I…” She closed her eyes, lashes fluttering against Dax’s cheek. “Well. Daxes aren’t very good at backing away from a challenge, are we?”

Dax smiled. “No, we’re not.”

“It’s easier to stay calm when he’s calm… and that’s rare enough at the best of times.” Dax’s heart ached at that; not for the first time, she found herself missing her Benjamin, her kind and gentle-hearted old friend. “And anyway, it’s not like it was stopping me from doing my job, so what was the point in making a drama out of it?”

“I suppose there wasn’t one,” Dax said. “You didn’t even know if there was anything really wrong.”

“Exactly. And he kept telling me there wasn’t. And I really… I wanted so badly to believe him, to believe that it was all in my head, that I was just over-tired or over-worked, but…”

She didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Not that she needed to; Dax could piece the rest together well enough by herself. She had been through it too, after all, and she knew without Jadzia having to tell her that her problem wasn’t the kind that would go away if she ignored it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know how bad it had become, how bad it needed to become for this universe’s Sisko to sit up and take notice. Suddenly she felt very, very sad, and incredibly protective of this woman who might have been her.

“You must have felt very lonely,” she said, very softly.

“Not really.” Jadzia sighed. “I just felt angry. I… I still feel angry.”

She bit her lip again, drawing a fresh wave of blood, and Dax’s own mouth watered to imagine the taste, fresh and rich and metal-sweet and— _not now, please not now._

“I know.” She did. She really, really did.

She took a deep, steadying breath. Honestly, she felt a little cornered, trapped by her own empathy. She couldn’t abandon Jadzia now any more than she could have turned her back on her when Sisko explained the situation. It was frustrating, like everything was spiralling rapidly beyond what meagre control she might once have had, like she didn’t have a choice in anything any more. Part of her knew that the trap was one of her own making, that she had brought this all upon herself; Kira had tried to warn her, and her own common sense had screamed at her to get out while she could, but how could she listen to either of them when there was another Jadzia Dax who was in pain? 

It was a mistake; it had been a mistake to come here, and it was a mistake to even think of going to Terok Nor. She knew that, but she knew just as well that there was no alternative. Going might be a mistake, but even if she died out there, at least she’d go down knowing that she had done the right thing, that her stupidity was for a good cause, that she went down as a champion for someone who had nobody else. If she turned her back now, she would be safe, but how could she live with herself knowing what that safety had cost?

She had everything. She had a whole universe of friends and family waiting for her, a support network so wide she couldn’t see the end of it any direction. Whatever happened to her, she would be taken care of; all Jadzia had was a bad-tempered savage who didn’t have the time or the patience to take her seriously even when she was losing her mind. How could she turn away from that? How could she look at this frustrated young woman who was her, but a version of her who had been deprived of all the things that she herself took for granted… how could she look at her and say that she would have to find somebody else to save her? How could she do that, knowing perfectly well that there was nobody else?

She couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. Who could?

Kira, perhaps. But, of course, Kira wasn’t here now.

“All right.” The words out of her mouth before her brain had the chance to keep them inside, and though the voice was her own, she didn’t recognise it at all.

Jadzia stared at her; for about half a second, she looked very small and very broken, that rough-and-ready haircut and those perfectly straight shoulders doing nothing to hide the heartbreaking hope on her face, or the self-loathing that chased it away. It was obvious that she hated it, hated that she had become so dependant, that she had no choice but to lay all she was at the feet of a familiar stranger, hated that it had come to this at all.

Dax knew how she felt. She had felt the same way herself that night on the _Defiant_ , weak and stupid, scared and unable to look after herself, huddling on the bottom bunk of Julian’s quarters like a child in need of comfort, unable to even provide herself with a safe haven to sleep. She’d felt useless, and even as she found comfort in Julian’s company, in the very same breath she had hated herself for needing it. She knew what Jadzia was going through, knew the conflict churning inside her, and she knew that there was nothing she could do to make it less.

So she didn’t try. She didn’t sugar-coat the issue, and she didn’t pretend it wasn’t there. What would be the point? They were both Dax. They both knew the story; they both were the story.

“All right,” she said again, steadier and more decisive. “You want me to go? I’ll go.”

“You will?” Jadzia managed, voice high and hopeful.

Dax nodded, then sighed. “You need benzocyatizine,” she said simply, as though that really was the answer to all their problems. “And if you really believe I’m our best shot at getting hold of some, then I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Of course you do.” Jadzia seemed stunned that she would even think that way. “You always have a choice.”

“Not with this,” Dax told her, a statement of fact that she desperately wished wasn’t true. “Not with you.”

Jadzia exhaled tightly, the weighted sigh of someone who hated how heavy they were. “You’re a better person than I am.”

Dax didn’t want to say it aloud, but she couldn’t help thinking she was right. At the very least, she was a luckier person, and goodness always came easier to the lucky ones.

She thought again of her Benjamin, of her Julian and her Kira, of the universe that was hers, the people that were hers as well, the seven lifetimes that belonged to Dax and the youth and optimism that was Jadzia’s. She thought of herself, of all the things she had become, of all the things her life had allowed her to become. She had opportunities, she’d had space and resources, the luxury of education and learning, safety and friendship and generosity. She’d had everything a growing young soul could hope for.

Then, inevitably, she thought of this other woman, this broken-down version of herself, this young Jadzia, so angry and so aggressive, in bed with a Benjamin Sisko who was so unlike the one she knew. She thought of her, utterly surrounded by familiar faces but without a soul to talk to. Maybe she wasn’t alone, but Dax could tell that she was incredibly lonely.

 _I am a better person,_ she thought, chest tight with sorrow. _But that’s not your fault._

Of course, now that she’d agreed to stick her neck out for this unfortunate other version of herself, now that she’d actually said the damn words, being a ‘better person’ didn’t really feel like a good thing at all. She felt completely out of her depth, drowning in this alien universe that was so like and so different from the world she knew. She felt stupid and stubborn, all the things Kira shook her head at and told her she needed to stop indulging. What kind of idiot would agree to something like this?, she thought, and shook her head. How stupid must she be? She imagined Kira on Bajor right now, rolling her eyes and looking up to the heavens, bowing to her Prophets, and begging them to explain why she couldn’t have just picked a nice, normal Bajoran to be her friend.

Feeling very alone, Dax heaved a sigh. “One day,” she sighed, sitting down heavily on the bed, “being a better person will be the death of me.”

Jadzia shrugged, not particularly concerned about that now she had what she wanted. “For both of our sakes, I hope that won’t be today.” No doubt she thought the feint at wit was cute, but Dax found herself biting back the urge to throw a cushion at her. Sensing her annoyance, Jadzia sobered a little. “Look, it won’t even be that dangerous. I’ve kept a low profile. The Intendant has no reason to suspect I’m part of Benjamin’s little rebellion, so unless you let something slip…”

Dax shook her head. “I won’t.”

Jadzia smiled, and for a second Dax was sure she saw Kira’s depthless faith in the impossible ice-blue of her eyes. “Then we have nothing to worry about.”

 _We_. The word felt strangely intimate, almost uncomfortable. “You’ll have to brief me,” Dax said, trying to shake off the feeling. “If I’m going to get into her good graces, I need to know everything about her. And you. And the station, too, probably. Hell, just give me everything you know about everything.”

Jadzia sat down beside her, one hand on Dax’s shoulder and the other resting lightly on the bed for balance. “You’ll get whatever you need,” she promised. “Don’t worry your pretty little head.”

Dax acknowledged with a grunt, ignoring the sarcasm. “And I still need to get there without being shot out of the sky on sight,” she reminded her. “Which might prove more of a problem.”

“No, it won’t.”

There was such confidence in her voice, such unshakeable certainty, that Dax blinked. “You sound pretty sure of yourself,” she remarked coolly. “For someone who’s too scared to do the job herself.”

Jadzia glared at her for that. “Do you want my help or not?” she snapped. “Because I’m not opposed to keeping my secrets for myself if you push me.” Dax quirked a brow, calling her bluff, and she relented almost instantly, like there was no fight left in her at all; it was painful to see. “All right. Fine. We both know I’ve got too much riding on you to play coy.”

“Don’t forget that,” Dax told her, quiet but serious. “I’m risking a lot for you.”

“Trust me,” Jadzia quipped, rolling her eyes. “Even if I wanted to forget it, we both know you wouldn’t let me.”

That was true enough, and it probably went without saying, but getting it out there diffused a little of the tension between them; it wasn’t quite mistrust, but it danced close enough to make Dax uneasy. For all that she was risking just by being here at all, and for all that she was opening herself up to risk even more by infiltrating Terok Nor, there was still that impenetrable barrier that Jadzia had put up, hiding herself away like that wall was the last line of defence in an interplanetary war.

Dax knew that defence mechanism well — she’d lived behind that particular barrier herself all through her initiate training, and she still hadn’t quite managed to pull it all the way down — and she knew better than to take it personally. She knew better than anyone, even Benjamin, that it was just her, just Jadzia, but of course knowing it didn’t make it any less frustrating to deal with.

The longer she stayed here, the better she understood how annoying those defence mechanisms must be for people like Benjamin and Kira, even for Julian, the friends and confidantes who tried to reach out to her sometimes, just like she was trying to reach out to this Jadzia, the friends who would drop everything just to get her to Trill, even after she had been so terrible to them, the friends who only wanted to help. She was lucky, she remembered again, that she still had those friends. She could be as prickly as she wanted, build as many barriers as she needed, but they would still be there when the wall finally came down.

This Jadzia had none of that; she didn’t have anything at all, and Dax supposed the least she could do for her was to show a little patience while she processed the idea that maybe, just maybe, she really did just want to help.

With a little effort, she pushed the thoughts aside, focusing on the task at hand. The sooner she got to Terok Nor, she reminded herself, the sooner she’d be back, and the sooner she got back here, the sooner she could help Jadzia and go home. There was no point in dwelling on their differences now, or even their similarities. This wasn’t the time to think like a Trill, and it definitely wasn’t the time to think like a Dax. No. This was the time to think like a Starfleet officer.

“So,” she said, “what do you propose?”

Her counterpart grinned, devious and predatory, and for the first time it seemed almost natural. She leaned in very close, close enough that a few rough-cut strands of loose hair tickled the spots crossing the edge of Dax’s jaw; the sensation was maddening, and just a little intoxicating. 

“Something I’ve not even proposed to Benjamin,” Jadzia murmured, breath warm against her ear.

Dax’s breath caught, skin flushing hot. _Too close,_ she thought. _She’s too close, I’m too close, we’re too close…_

“What’s that?” she managed in a breathy squeak.

Jadzia’s lips curved devilishly against her skin. “I’m going to let you into my cockpit.”


	8. Chapter 8

As it turned out, that wasn’t a euphemism.

When they talked about it with Sisko afterwards, he burst out laughing. Dax would have been offended by his manic mirth, but she’d come to realise by this point that he just found everything funny. Nothing, not even a potentially life-threatening jaunt into Alliance space to infiltrate one of their most closely-watched space stations in the quadrant, was exempt from his twisted sense of humour. Still, that didn’t make it any less irritating, and she tapped her foot and glared until he calmed down.

“She must really like you,” he chortled, once he finally had himself back under control. “She won’t let me near that goddamned ship.”

Jadzia rolled her eyes, exaggerated but affectionate. “I don’t see you volunteering to put your worthless life on the line for me,” she shot back. “Maybe if you were half the man she is—” She gestured suggestively at Dax, who ducked her head, uncomfortable all over again. “—you’d actually be up to the challenge. But until then, you ride bitch.”

“I could teach you a thing or two about bitching…” Sisko muttered under his breath. Dax wasn’t quite sure which of the two of them he was talking to, and she was fairly certain she didn’t want to know. “And about riding, too.”

Not wanting to hear any more of this, Dax let out a frustrated groan. “Can we please focus?” she begged.

Sisko shrugged, like he didn’t particularly care one way or the other. And why would he? As much as she might look like his lover, talk like her and smile like her, even crack stupid jokes at inappropriate moments like she did, she was no more his Jadzia than he was her Benjamin. She didn’t mean a damn thing to him. So what if she decided to go off on some kind of half-cocked suicide mission to Terok Nor? Why the hell should he care? So long as his Jadzia was safe, what did it matter to him if another one got shot down or killed?

“Fine,” he said, heavy-laden with indifference and boredom. “If you want to go, go.” He shot Dax a warning look, one that said she wouldn’t try to tell him what to do again if she knew what was good for her, then spread out his arms, washing his hands of her. “Do what you like, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me.”

Dax opened her mouth to argue, to point out that she was doing all of this for his damn woman, but Jadzia beat her to the punch, offended as much on her own behalf as on Dax’s. She took a long step forwards, and Dax was sure she saw the air shimmering with the heat of her aggression.

“Of course it doesn’t,” she said, voice thick with bitterness; her fists clenched and unclenched spasmodically at her sides, and Dax wanted to step forwards and calm her, but part of her couldn’t help thinking that Sisko had this coming. “Nothing ever makes any difference to you, does it? You don’t care about a damn thing. Not unless it’s got your name stamped on it.”

“I care about you, don’t I?” Sisko retorted.

“And we both know I’ve had your name stamped on me for months.” She rolled her eyes, then slapped him. “That’s for being an idiot. In case you forgot, you arrogant bastard, she is me. So you sure as hell better start caring about her too.”

Sisko rubbed his jaw, turning to Dax for sympathy. “You see what I put up with? I do nothing but treat her well, and this is the thanks I get. What’s a man to do?”

“If I ever meet one, I’ll ask him,” Jadzia muttered. She turned to Dax as well, elbowing her sharply in the ribs. “I’ll brief you in the morning,” she said as Dax winced. “I don’t know about you, but I’m too tired to think about the damned Intendant tonight.”

Dax hadn’t really thought about it until then, but as soon as she heard the word ‘tired’, she realised that she was exhausted. She had somewhat lost track of the passage of time; her brief dalliance with unintentional unconsciousness when she’d beamed in didn’t really count as ‘sleep’ in any meaningful sense, and she had spent most of the previous night slaughtering imaginary Klingons in the holosuite. She’d naturally assumed that she would be able to take a nap after she and Kira arrived on Bajor, but those plans had gone to hell and back when Sisko had shown up and dragged her into a parallel universe.

Sleep hadn’t been a priority for quite some time, she realised dully, and it was only now, faced with the prospect of a full night’s worth, that she realised just how long it had been since she’d had any at all. By this point, even the tamped-down dirt floor seemed like a decent place to put her head down.

“A little sleep does sound good,” she admitted out loud.

Sisko shot her a disbelieving look, like she’d just demanded something utterly extravagant. “Awfully presumptuous, aren’t you?” he snorted.

Dax glared. Given what they were asking of her, she thought, a little corner to curl up in really wasn’t a lot to ask for in return, and her expression hardened into a challenge. “You bet your ass I am. I’m putting my life on the line for your ‘woman’, going to hell and back just to get her some damn medicine. The least you can do is clear a little floor space for me, don’t you think?”

“Of course,” Jadzia cut in, before Sisko had a chance to lodge his foot even further into his mouth. “Benjamin is just being his usual abrasive self.” She glared, eyes shining like steel. “Aren’t you?”

He glared, not at all happy to be taking orders from two versions of the same woman. “I guess you can bunk with Smiley,” he huffed irritably.

Jadzia muscled him out of the way, scowling as he lost his footing. “Ignore him,” she said, shooting Dax a winning smile. “You can stay in our room. Benjamin won’t mind.”

“He _will_ mind,” Sisko snapped.

“He won’t if he ever wants to get laid again,” Jadzia shot back, not missing a beat.

In hindsight, Dax supposed she shouldn’t have been so quick to take up such an unexpectedly thoughtful gesture. Truth be told, even the offer to bunk with Smiley was more hospitality than she’d anticipated, and the promise of an actual room with some relative privacy was too good to pass up. But then, how was she to know that _“you can stay in our room”_ would translate in practice to _‘you can sleep on the floor while Benjamin and I have loud and aggressive sex in the bed less than a metre away’_?

Self-restraint, she mused, curled up in a ball with her hands over her ears, was not a friend to Daxes in any universe.

*

_“Harder.”_

_Jadzia looked up at her, teeth bared. Her eyes shone in the darkness, twin sparks of ice-blue, bright enough to burn. Bright enough, yes, but not brave enough. They shimmered, damp and hazy, trembling blue stars cutting through a cave as cold as night, twinkling and beautiful but doomed to sputter out long before they hurt anyone. Just like Jadzia herself, small and weak and ultimately worthless. Poor little girl, she didn’t stand a chance, and the gleam of her teeth as she twisted that snarl into a smile was as pitiful as the rest of her._

_“Well, well, well,” she purred, but her voice was shaking too. “You are insatiable.”_

_Dax growled, fingers curled around the blade of the knife, hot blood seeping between her fingers. “And you’re not listening.” She lashed out, quick as lightning, beads of blood flying as she raked a deep gash across Jadzia’s beautiful face. “I said ‘harder’.”_

_Jadzia shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”_

_She toyed with her own blade, just as curved and just as sharp as Dax’s; it was as beautiful as she was, but cracked along the hilt. Just one more imperfect reflection in this imperfect mirror, Dax thought, and shook her head. The weapon was flawed, just like Jadzia, and she would teach them both the danger of showing their weaknesses so brazenly._

_And brazen she was. Jadzia was young and stupid; she hadn’t learned how to control herself, to feed the fire inside her, to let it grow before setting it free. That was another mistake she would pay for, that and her damned arrogance. She smiled lazily, flipping the knife from one hand to the other, catching it effortlessly between her fingers, drawing a trickle of blood to echo Dax’s own. A fitting tribute, she supposed, if a wasted one._

_“Harder,” she commanded again._

_“Of course, my lady.” Jadzia smiled, bowing low, and Dax thought of all the ways she could kill her before she had a chance to straighten up. “Your wish is my command.”_

_She lashed out with her fist, sharp and sudden. The blow was clumsy but effective, and the body between them crumpled to the floor, helpless and choking. It mustered a low wheezing grunt, but nothing more, and Dax laughed. Where was all that worldly advice now? Where was the old man’s wisdom he crowed about so often? It was a glorious sight, the shuddering spasms of a body beaten to within an inch of its life, and this body more than any other. Dax allowed herself a moment to relish it. She never got tired of watching her dear old friends suffer._

_Jadzia, the one who’d landed the blow,, beamed her triumph._

_Silly girl, Dax thought, misinterpreting her pleasure as approval, her perversion as praise. Did she expect applause for managing to hit a half-dead target? Did she expect to be lauded for not missing what a blind Bolian wouldn’t have missed? She was clumsy and lazy, giving only as much as she thought she needed to, and Dax lashed her face again for having the gall to think that was acceptable._

_“Still not hard enough,” she snapped, savouring the frustration on that beautiful bleeding face as self-satisfaction gave way to bitterness and disappointment. “He could still beg for mercy if he wanted to.”_

_“But he won’t,” Jadzia said. Her smile was dangerous, Dax would give her that. “He’s not stupid.”_

_“No, but you are.” Jadzia hissed but didn’t retaliate. Dax shook her head. “It doesn’t matter that he won’t. What matters is that he could. You’re not striking hard enough. Where’s your killer instinct? Where’s the bloodlust? What are you trying to do here? Make him cry?”_

_“Why not?” Jadzia asked. “His tears taste so sweet.”_

_“They taste of salt and waste.” Dax swung with the knife again, but this time Jadzia had the good sense to duck out of the way. “If that’s good enough for you, then you’re wasting both of our time here. Unless it’s blood you’re thirsty for, get out of my sight.”_

_Jadzia hissed and snarled, impatience and insult rushing to the surface and colouring her skin. Her tongue darted out, quick as a flash, and caught the trickle of blood from the gash on her cheek. “Blood,” she said, and let that be answer enough._

_“Good,” Dax said. “Ache for it. Hurt for it. Want it so badly that you stop breathing. Let it break you, then maybe you’ll have a chance of breaking him.”_

_“I don’t want to break him,” Jadzia told her . “I want to break you.”_

_It was inevitable, of course, and for the first time Dax really did approve. She had been waiting for hours, anticipating and excited, pulsing for the moment when this silly little girl got tired of being under her wing and decided to spread her own. She had hoped, of course, that she would be better than this by the time it happened, but she supposed it was silly to hope for miracles. No, this would suffice; Dax had always been an expert in making do with what she had._

_There was a smile on her face as she met the sudden bitterness in Jadzia’s eyes, ice-blue turned to plasma, the same familiar hunger twisted and turned into something else, something ravenous and desperate. It wasn’t just hunger now, oh no; this was starvation._

_Yes, Dax thought. Good._

_She smiled. She would have cracked her knuckles, only they were still bruised and bloody, raw from use and abuse. Besides, she didn’t want to put the knife down for the sake of a token gesture. Holding it was a rare kind of pleasure, the slide of steel under skin, the sweet intoxication of blood on her fingers, the pain kicking like a drug in her veins. Oh, this little upstart had no idea who she was dealing with, did she? She had no idea how outmatched she was, how easily Dax could strip her of everything she had learned and everything she was. But then, of course, that was the point._

_Who was Jadzia, after all, but the sum of what Dax made her?_

_“Silly girl…” she said, and that was all it took._

_Just as she knew she would, Jadzia lunged at her. Dax didn’t bother to block, letting her lazy fist connect with her jaw for no reason other than because it felt good._

_That was the best thing she’d learned from Joran. Not the first, oh no, but the best. Definitely the best. Pain wasn’t just for giving. No. The blood on her hands felt just as good when it was her own as when it was someone else’s, and the pain swelling outwards from the crack in her jaw fired the heat in her veins, stoked the flames in her chest, woke the monster beating in time with her heart. It was a good lesson, the best lesson. It was the most valuable lesson, and she owed him for it. She owed him so much._

_How would it feel, she wondered idly, to paint her skin with little Jadzia’s blood? How would it feel to know that the blood was her own, but not truly hers? How would it feel to watch the spasms twitch and shuddering on her own face as she died? Would she feel the pain in herself as well? Would it heighten the triumph?_

_She wanted to know, she decided, and when Jadzia lashed out again, this time she would not let it connect. “Silly little girl,” she taunted. “Don’t you know never to strike the same place twice? Mother Nature could have taught you that, if only you were willing to listen.” Jadzia swung again, blind and furious. “But you never will. You never listen, so you’ll never learn. There are so many lessons out there, little girl, if only you were willing to learn.”_

_Jadzia howled, rearing back for another swing. Without the least effort, Dax stepped aside, catching the flailing fist in the hand that held the knife, squeezing tight, and catching the blade between their fists, blood on blood, hers mingling with hers, and oh, it felt spectacular. Blood shed and blood spilled and so much blood — Dax’s blood — but not all hers. She would bleed this little one dry, and still have blood left inside her. Dax would die, and Dax would watch. What a delightful thought._

_She wondered what Dax’s heart would taste like. Weak and watery like the host, or tough and full of flavour like the symbiont?_

_There was only one way to find out, she decided, and drove her free hand into Jadzia’s exposed stomach, an open-palmed strike with the heel of her hand, slamming with full force into the place where the symbiont cowered. Jadzia, weak as she was, crumpled instantly, hitting the floor with a horrible retching sound, arm twisted up at an impossible angle as Dax refused to release her blood-slick fist._

_“You’re not very good at protecting yourself,” she said with a bored sigh. “But then, you’re not very good at anything, are you?”_

_Blind with rage and pain, Jadzia lurched to her feet. She swayed where she stood, staggering as though she was drunk. Maybe she was, wrecked and wasted on pain and anger, and who could blame her for finding that a little intoxicating?_

_Dax watched with a smile, licking her lips as Jadzia heaved blood and bile, imagined yet again the taste of her heart. In the corner of her mind, she heard Curzon’s voice, telling her over and over again that this was not honourable, that she was not honourable, that she couldn’t fight like a Klingon and eat like a Klingon and wear Klingon colours and yet still kill without honour._

_But then, what did Dax care for honour? What good was honour when all she wanted was blood and brutality? Klingons fought with rage and hate too, didn’t they? They killed with violence and bloodlust, and ate the hearts of their prey, and wasn’t that just as damn important? Curzon could keep his precious honour; Dax would take the rest._

_Jadzia swung again, but it was as wild as she was, unfocused and easily avoided. Dax laughed; she didn’t even need to take a step in order to dodge the blow. “Silly girl,” she said again, yanking her hand free at last and plunging the knife into Jadzia’s shoulder. “Silly little girl.”_

_Of course that struck a nerve; the insult was so much more painful than the open wound, Dax could tell, and when Jadzia howled, it was edged with mania. There was that fury, that violent Dax temper, that brutal Joran hatred. There was that killer instinct, that wild animal savagery. There was everything she had tried to teach her, all the lessons she would not learn, and as she struck again, harder and with precision, a white-knuckled fist landing right between Dax’s ribs, Dax wondered if maybe she would get some of the brutality she’d been looking for after all._

_“Better!” she shouted, relishing the crack of bone on bone._

_Jadzia lunged once more, spurred on in spite of herself by the encouragement. Dax ducked again, but the pain in her ribs made her sluggish and slow, and the bruise on her jaw found itself a fresh companion as her head snapped back, the blood-soaked walls beginning to spin._

_“Harder!” She spat blood. “I could still beg for mercy!”_

_But, of course, Jadzia wasn’t after mercy. She wasn’t even really after death, either; all she wanted was pain. Her pain, Dax’s pain, the pain of the twitching body still choking on breath between them and the six lifeless others lying dead behind him, their hearts already ripped out and devoured, the spoils of that still staining the floor pink and red. Death wasn’t good enough for this Jadzia, this silly little girl, this shattered-glass reflection of the real Dax. Death wasn’t enough, or destruction, or even violence. For her, it was all about pain._

_Dax supposed she could understand that. She was still young, still nurturing the half-buried memories rising up slowly inside of her. She didn’t fully understand, not like Dax did. She wasn’t truly one with Joran yet, so how could she be expected to see beyond that one valuable lesson, the best if not the first?_

_But the best lesson was not the only one, and there was so much more. Dax knew it, even if Jadzia didn’t. There was so much more than pain; however intoxicating it was, there was always so much more, and that was where Dax had the advantage. She already knew the pain, knew it intimately and personally; she had learned that lesson a thousand times, over and over again until she had each line memorised._

_Even now, she was thriving on the taste of her own blood, the rich salt in her mouth and the sticky-wet stains on her fingers. Even now, she was letting it hone her rage and drive her hate. But it wasn’t just the pain; the taste, the texture, the colour, the salt and the sweetness, the raw strength of it. A wound had so much more to give than just the pain, and that was why poor little Jadzia didn’t stand a chance. Poor little girl, wielding her pain as though it were her only weapon. Even now, she refused to learn. She would never learn._

_They traded blows and blood for what felt like a lifetime. Exhaustion was another weapon, Dax knew; sometimes it was the best one. Jadzia was young, but even her endurance wasn’t infinite. Dax held her fatigue against her, turning that into a blade as keen and sharp as any other. Even pain couldn’t stand up when exhaustion took hold._

_Dax was tired, yes, but she had learned to harness her own fatigue as easily as she harnessed her own pain. The sweat slick and slippery on her skin was another incentive to keep going, the salt sharp and stinging in her eyes, tearing through the open wounds, the weight bearing down on her eyelids, the heavy shaking in her limbs. She was exhausted, and she let the exhaustion fuel her for another step, and then another, on and on and on._

_Jadzia was exhausted too, of course, worn down and worn out and bleeding half to death. It was a miracle she was still standing at all, though Dax wasn’t exactly surprised that she was. If she let herself falter, if she fell down and stayed down, then she wouldn’t be a Dax at all. She’d forfeit in the moment she fell, and this would be all over. If she could breathe, she could fight. Wasn’t that another valuable lesson? If she could breathe she could fight, and if she could fight, she could win._

_She could win._

_She could win._

_Dax saw the moment of clarity flash in those ice-blue eyes, even before Jadzia realised it was happening. She saw the strain-lined clouds lift, saw the pain take a sudden step backwards, opening up light-years of fresh new space for other things. She saw everything as clearly as if she was experiencing it herself, as if she was living it again, felt it again now as if it were in her too._

_Finally, Jadzia was learning._

_Finally, she saw and felt and knew. Finally, she was Dax. Finally, she could carry that name, and everything it meant; finally, she could let it define her. Finally, she was as much a Dax as the one who stood over her. Finally, as the exhaustion poured down on them both, sweat-soaked skin and blurred vision, Dax half-blind in one eye and Jadzia entirely blind in the other, finally that silly little girl understood._

_That was all it took. A flicker of clarity, a flash of understanding, and suddenly the tides were turning._

_Suddenly, Dax was the one on the floor. Suddenly, her ears were ringing, and the world was tilting, and the blood in her mouth was bitter and sickly, thin with salt. Suddenly, Jadzia was the one standing, on her feet standing over her. Suddenly, Jadzia was the one with, fire in her eyes and someone else’s blood on her hands and death cracking like a whip with the rise and fall of her breathing. Suddenly, they were where they should have been hours ago, at war. Suddenly, it was everything Dax had hoped for, blood and pain and violence, hatred and the promise of death. Dax on Dax, Jadzia over Jadzia, and she couldn’t tell any more where Dax ended and silly little Jadzia began._

_But no, she thought. She wasn’t so little now, was she? She wasn’t silly at all now that she was learning._

_“Good,” she said out loud. “Very, very good.”_

_But little Jadzia wasn’t after praise or approval now. Not any more, oh no. Now she was after blood. Dax’s blood, the blood that was her blood._

_Dax saw the hatred in her eyes, ravenous hunger replacing that little girl’s simplistic love of pain, the urge to kill overshadowing even her laziness, and she was so proud. This was her doing, she thought. This was her work. This vengeful killing machine, this mercurial hellion, this monster that shared her face, this perfect paragon of violence… it was all hers. She was hers._

_“I’m going to kill you now,” Jadzia said, plain and simple and matter-of-fact, like they were talking about the weather. “You taught me everything I know.”_

_“And you finally started learning,”_

_Jadzia backhanded her, and Dax smiled as her lip split._

_“You made me what I am,” Jadzia snarled, accusation far more than appreciation. “You put those thoughts into my head. And now I’m going to kill you.”_

_“If that’s what you want,” Dax said, baring bloody teeth._

_In a lot of ways, this felt inevitable. Where she should have felt fear, or at least anticipation, Dax found that she only felt resignation, acceptance without excitement, like she’d always known it would come to this, like every minute before this moment had just been a waiting game, like there had never been anything more to her existence than making Jadzia what she was now._

_There was excitement, once. Dax anticipated this moment, waiting with bated breath while Jadzia refused again and again to learn, heart pounding with real enthusiasm every time that silly little girl raised her fist against an innocent soul, hoping against hope that the next blow would be aimed at her, that the next rain of violence would find the right target. She had looked forward to it, that glorious moment when the student surpasses the teacher, where the teacher rests at last, content to know that her work is complete._

_Jadzia had earned the right to stand over her like this, knife in one hand and bruise-bloodied fingers balled into fists in the other, fire alight in her veins and the endless drumbeat of her heart rending the air between them. She had earned the right to take Dax’s life, to reach in and rip her heart from her chest, to feel its last beat against her own pulse, blood mingling with blood, Dax with Dax, forever and completely. Jadzia had earned that, and Dax had earned it too. Between them, they had earned it._

_But now that the moment was here, now that Dax looked up into Jadzia’s eyes and saw the ice in their depths — not just in the shade of blue this time, but in everything behind it — she found that she didn’t care. The excitement was gone, washed down with the blood pooling in her mouth and the salt-sweet taste as she swallowed it down, sharp in the back of her throat. It was inevitable. The moment was here, but death was death, and Dax found that hers brought little comfort just because it was wrought by her own hand._

_Still, though, Jadzia had earned this. Jadzia had earned it all, and Dax would give her what she deserved._

_“Good,” she said, and smiled as Jadzia drove the knife deep into her chest._

_“Good,” Joran echoed, hollow in her head, and smiled as her ribs split wide open._

_“Good,” said silly little Jadzia, and smiled as she swallowed her first bite of Dax’s heart._

_Good. Good. Good._

_But where was the good in dying like this?_

*

She woke to the sound of gasping and the terrifying realisation that she couldn’t breathe.

Her lungs were on fire, and it felt like a lifetime before they caught up with the rest of her. She choked and gagged, helpless and terrified, death-knells ringing in her ears as she waited for her body to realise that it was alive, panting through a closed throat, noiseless and starving.

The air around her grew heavier, more oppressive, too thick to swallow, and she listened with a rising sense of panic to the hollowed-out echoes of breathing all around her. It couldn’t possibly be her own breath she was hearing, because her burning lungs were still putting themselves back together, but it sounded like her, and it was an embarrassingly long time before the spectral shadows of the dream dissolved and her mind cleared enough to remember where she was.

 _“Through the looking glass”_ , Kira had said once, and Dax shuddered to think of how accurate that description truly was.

It was Jadzia’s breathing she could hear, she realised, and forced herself to match the rhythm with her own as soon as her respiratory system started working again. It was just little Jadzia. Jadzia, the reason she was here in the first place, the reason she was going to Terok Nor, the reason she was sleeping on the floor and not bunking down with some rebel or another. Jadzia, who needed her help, who was depending on her to understand, who had nobody else in the whole universe.

Jadzia, who had ripped the heart out of her chest and swallowed it.

 _No_ , she reminded herself, shaking with the memory. That was a dream. A vivid, visceral dream, sure, but just a dream. It didn’t matter that she could still taste the blood, still feel the pain, still remember choking as her own blood as she breathed her last, as her lungs collapsed and her chest was torn open. None of that mattered, because it was still just a dream. Just a senseless, stupid dream, no more real than any of the others. She hadn’t really ripped out Kira’s heart, had she? And Jadzia hadn’t really ripped out hers either. It was all just a dream. A child’s nightmare. Just a dream, nothing more.

Still, though, it was a long time before she could chase those shadows away and calm her racing heart, the pounding kick-drum a potent reminder that it was still there, inside her chest where it belonged.

She sat up, tentative and a little sore. It had been a very long time, almost longer than she could remember, since she’d had any reason to sleep on the ground, and cold dirt floors weren’t exactly kind to sensitive Trill skin. Her back ached, and her head throbbed a little, though that was probably more from the revenant shadows of the dream, pressure and pain bearing down on her like a solid weight, than the awkward position she’d been sleeping in. Her knuckles still hurt, long-dried blood and dark bruises standing stark on pale skin in the hazy half-light of this place. She wasn’t sure where the light was coming from, but she supposed it didn’t really matter. She could see; that was enough.

With a heavy sigh, she leaned back against the wall, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, and for the ghosts of violence and brutality to fade out from her mind. She was so tired of these dreams, tired of the savagery and the ruthlessness, tired of the feral feelings it filled her with, tired of waking up unable to think or breathe, tired of the endless minutes it took to shake the shudders and the shadows. She was tired of everything, and thinking about how tired she was just made her even more tired.

The solid stone surface of the wall was still dark with blood, long-dried stains caking the slick stone surface because nobody had bothered to clean it up. Water was probably a rare commodity here, she thought, and was immediately struck by how thirsty she was.

“You’re awake.”

Dax blinked, looking up to find her counterpart staring down at her from the bed, eyes wide and pale, taking in the dull half-light and turning it to cold mist.

“That makes two of us,” she observed lightly.

Jadzia shrugged, stretching lazily. “You were thrashing around.” Her voice was low; Dax supposed she didn’t want to risk disturbing the still-slumbering Sisko. “You were making so much noise I’m surprised you didn’t wake the dead.”

“You’re exaggerating.” Dax tried to chuckle, but the sound rasped like sandpaper against the dryness in her throat. “Do you have any water?”

On closer inspection, she saw a flicker of conflict in Jadzia’s eyes. They darted about the room, uneasy and uncomfortable, like she was searching for something hidden in the shadows, and Dax found herself wondering if perhaps she had been dreaming too. She thought back once again, remembering the time she herself had spent fighting off low isoboramine levels and invasive visions of things she could not remember. She thought about the hallucinations, how terrifying they were; at the symbiont pools, the Guardian had asked her about ‘dreams’, and she had corrected him, but in that moment she’d really wished that they had manifested as dreams instead. Dreams were easily forgotten on waking, she’d thought, and wished for something so simple.

When the dreams had come, much later and long after the hallucinations had subsided, they were just as bad. But how could she have known that at the time?

She remembered that night they’d spent on the _Defiant_ on the way to Trill, how anxious she’d been, how afraid to sleep. There were no dreams then, but she had been afraid just the same, something off-balance inside her head. Julian had let her stay with him, and his gentle compassion had helped her to stand strong against those fears, against the demons in her head. She had fallen asleep then, peacefully and easily, comforted by his presence so much more than his words.

Looking up at Jadzia now, she wondered if she felt the same pull, that desperate need for comfort and companionship, for someone to watch over her and keep her safe from the terrible thoughts, the visions that she could not fight and could not understand. She wondered too if that was why she had been so aggressive last night as she’d made love to Sisko, relentless in the way she wore him out; how much of that enthusiasm was born of real passion, Dax mused, and how much from the ache to be kept safe?

Whatever the reason had been then, she seemed grateful for Dax’s company now, and even more so for an excuse to get out of bed. She moved with surprising grace, showing no signs of grogginess. How long had she been awake? Had she even slept at all? She was naked as she stood, not that Dax should have been surprised by that, and mustered a weakly lascivious smile as Dax watched.

“Enjoying the view?” she asked with just the hint of a purr, seemingly as much to take her mind off her own troubles as to take up this new excuse for inappropriate flirtation. “I could give you a tour, if you want…”

Dax chuckled, shaking her head. “Just the water for now.”

Naturally, Jadzia didn’t bother to cover her modesty before stepping out into the main living area. Dax followed, looking around at the dozing rebels, huddling together in whatever space they could find, mostly in small groups of twos and threes with just a few scattered individuals. For the most part, they were still heavily asleep, and so naturally paid the two identical newcomers no attention at all; Dax noted with some amusement the familiar shapes of Julian Bashir and Chief O’Brien curled around each other, though whether it was for warmth, convenience or simply companionship she didn’t venture to guess. 

Jadzia ignored them as readily as they ignored her, moving past the still bodies of her friends and hunkering down in a vaguely secluded corner where stockpiles of various supplies were stacked up in haphazard rows against the far wall. Dax kept a little distance as she watched, respecting the boundaries of their property. After a few moments of clumsy fumbling, Jadzia found what she was looking for and tossed a worn-looking waterskin across the short space. Dax caught it effortlessly and took a long grateful sip, willing herself not to take too much; who knew how short the rebels’ water supplies were?

“You can clean up in the bedroom,” Jadzia told her when Dax handed the skin back. “But I would wait until Benjamin’s awake, if I were you.” She looked her up and down, not for the first time, but this time with a very different air, appraisal rather than appreciation. “And you’ll need clothes, too, I suppose. The Intendant will eat you alive if you show up looking like that.” She smiled to herself, but there was a touch of bitterness in the expression. “Well, she’ll eat you alive anyway, but let’s at least try and get you looking the part before she does.”

Dax swallowed, discomfited by the idea, the unvoiced warning, and forced herself to focus on the issue of clothes. “You can lend me some of yours. And anything else, I’m sure.”

She thought fleetingly about her hair, how different it was. Hers was long, neat and straight where Jadzia’s was rough-cut and curled around the nape of her neck. She took better care of her appearance than most of the rebels, it seemed, but there was still a vast difference between the two of them. Dax hoped Jadzia didn’t expect her to cut hers; it would take much more than a potentially life-threatening undercover mission as an alternate version of herself to make her consider that.

As though reading her mind, Jadzia leaned across to free her hair from its ponytail. Dax shook it out, letting it fall about her shoulders, and scowled when Jadzia huffed an irritable sigh.

“You’re too clean,” she said. “You look like you’ve never done a day’s work in your life.”

Dax rolled her eyes, conceding the point with a shrug. “We’ll make do,” she insisted. “Besides, isn’t it a little more important that you get me briefed? It won’t matter what I look like if I can’t even answer basic questions.”

“True enough,” Jadzia acknowledged grudgingly.

“Might as well do it now,” Dax pressed. “Before Benjami— before your captain wakes up and starts throwing his weight around. I’ll need to know everything you can tell me. About you, about the Intendant, about Terok Nor. Anything you can think of.”

They sat down in a quiet little corner, as isolated as they were likely to get in a place like this, and Jadzia talked her through it.

That part didn’t take nearly as long as she’d expected it would. Jadzia had never been under the Intendant’s thumb, at least not as completely as Sisko was; Dax learned quickly that there were benefits in this universe to not having been born human ( _“Terran,”_ Jadzia corrected with a barely-repressed sneer). She had come and gone as she pleased, at least for the most part, and so long as she kept the Intendant ‘entertained’ and well-stocked with trinkets and tributes, she didn’t really pay her much mind.

So far as she was aware, the Intendant had no idea that she was involved in Benjamin’s Terran rebellion; after all, why would she be? Regardless, she said, it wouldn’t take much to convince her that she was on her side; she wasn’t one for drawn-out explanations, and all Dax needed to say was that she’d been in the far reaches of the galaxy stirring up trouble for a few months.

It all sounded so simple, put like that.

“The thing you’ve got to keep in mind about the Intendant…” Jadzia pressed, sensing Dax’s uncertainty; Dax wished she had a PADD to take notes on. “The thing you’ve got to remember is that she believes what she wants to believe. Like I told you before, she’s an unapologetic narcissist. And I do mean unapologetic. She’s much worse than you or me, or even Curzon. If you tell her she’s the centre of the universe, she’ll believe you, and not even think to question it.”

That was very good news. If there was one skill Dax valued above all others, it was her talent at shameless flattery.

Slightly less valuable, it turned out, was her so-called talent as a pilot. Torias would be turning in his grave, she thought, frustrated, as Jadzia talked her through the controls of her ship for the hundredth time.

“There’s no point in any of this if you can’t even land the damn ship,” she grumbled. “If you let anything happen to her, I will hunt you down and break every bone in that pretty little body of yours.”

Dax didn’t doubt it for a second, but she scowled just the same. Part of her was deeply offended that Jadzia seemed to care more about her precious ship than the woman who was risking her life for her, but she supposed she would have been the same way if she had her own ship. Certainly Tobin had been known to be possessive of his tools and equipment, and Torias would bite a hand clean off if it touched his cockpit without permission. Still, she couldn’t help venting a little of her aggravation, slamming her palm down on the console and uttering a string of Klingon curses.

“It’s not my fault,” she snapped. “This universe isn’t anything like what I’m used to.”

Sisko, who finally saw fit to join them halfway through the morning, laughed heartily. “If it would help any,” he offered cheerfully, “I can always just shoot her down in full view of the station. I bet the Intendant would love that.”

Naturally, Jadzia slapped him for that.

It was a long and arduous process, and it was well into the afternoon by the time Dax finally thought that she might actually be able to get the damn thing up and out of the atmosphere without immediately crashing, but their work was far from done.

They spent a few hours after that on her appearance. Sisko, blessedly, was banished from the bedroom, and Jadzia took advantage of their solitude, taking careful note of every detail of Dax’s body as she undressed, shedding the last remnants of the world she knew, the universe and the life that were hers. It was unsettling, becoming Jadzia, and for a moment she lost touch with herself, losing the Jadzia she used to be when faced with the one who stood opposite her. 

Jadzia touched her arm, then her hip, lingering and just a little suggestive. The contact brought her back to herself, and Dax gulped air, sweat beading between her bare shoulderblades. Curious but not questioning the reaction, Jadzia brushed her hair back, and Dax let herself lean into the contact, cold skin against the rough fabric of Jadzia’s clothes. She wanted to strip her, too, so that they could both be on equal footing, both treading the same ground.

Though she’d seen her naked just that morning, she found herself wishing she’d paid more attention, suddenly aching to see Jadzia as Jadzia was seeing her right now, to see the marks she didn’t have and the ones she did, to trace the lines of her own body with someone else inside it. She wanted to map out all the differences, to shape her fingertips against hips and thighs, to press her palm against her belly and feel the rhythm of her symbiont, her Dax, within. She wanted…

But then she remembered her dream, Jadzia’s eyes like ice as she reached in and tore out her heart, fingers squeezing through the cracks in her ribcage.

Bile rose in the back of her throat, fear and pain and muscle memory, and she pulled away, bracing against the wall as she fought to catch her breath. Jadzia let her go without protest, fishing out a weather-beaten shirt from a pile of discarded clothes, and holding it up against her own chest. “This one will bring out your eyes,” she said, and didn’t touch Dax again.

“Is there anything else I should know?” Dax asked when they were done, when she was dressed and suitably roughed up, clad in the patched and torn garb of a mercenary captain, hair tousled, smudges of dirt and lines of fatigue deepening her features.

She felt uncomfortable; they were the same person, but Jadzia’s clothes didn’t feel like they fit her at all. They were loose around the chest, but tight at the waist and arms, stretched and wrinkled in all the wrong places. She didn’t feel like a mercenary, or a captain; she felt young and stupid, like she was back at the Symbiosis Commission, like she was going through her initiate training all over again. For the first time, she felt like the small one, the one who was helpless and confused while her counterpart taught her how to be herself; for the first time since she’d arrived her, it felt like she was the little girl, shy young Jadzia, and the woman standing before her was Dax in all her glory.

Jadzia shrugged. All of a sudden, she seemed very tall. “Nothing else that I can think of. But I do have a few questions of my own, if you’re done asking yours.” She smirked. “For example, I’m simply dying to know about that scar on the inside of your—”

“You can ask when this is over,” Dax said quickly, blushing and taking another long step backwards.

Jadzia laughed, unperturbed by her reticence. “I’ll hold you to that,” she replied with a wicked grin.

Realistically, Dax knew there wasn’t anything else they could do. They had gone through everything either of them could think of, in as much detail as they could; the only way of knowing if it was worth anything was by putting it all into practice, and they couldn’t do that here. They could sit around talking for days on end, cramming little details into Dax’s head, checking and double-checking that she remembered it all, going through the same old stuff over and over again until they both went crazy from it, but in the end, the only way to know if she was really ready was by taking a deep breath and jumping in. She’d been on enough delicate missions to know that by now. There wasn’t anything else she could do from here, and every minute she wasted in learning what to do was an extra minute she wasn’t doing it. And far more important, it was an extra minute before she could go home.

She missed Deep Space Nine. She missed her home, her friends, her universe. She missed Benjamin, and Julian, even Chief O’Brien and his early-morning diatribes about the computer systems. She missed them all, more and more every time she saw their other selves here in this universe, dirty and angry and bitter. But more than any of them, she found that she missed Kira. She missed the wry quips, the way she challenged her, and the boundless faith. She missed the starry look in her eyes when she talked about the Prophets, and how sure she was that they could help Dax. She missed her encouragement, and the callouses on her hands. She missed Nerys.

Had she contacted the station and told them about this?, Dax wondered. Had she gone straight to Bajor to start her pilgrimage like Dax had told her to? If she had, was she enjoying herself? Had she got in touch with Bareil after all, seeking his companionship now that she was alone? Was he taking care of her, offering a distraction to keep her mind off her absent friend? Did she even think of her at all, lost in another universe, alone and confused? Or did she just shake her head every time Dax came to mind? _‘Stupid stubborn Trill,’_ she imagined her saying. _‘She has no idea what she’s let herself in for.’_

Two days, she’d said, and Dax realised with a jolt that she would never be finished here that quickly. They were already halfway through the first day, and she knew Kira well enough to know that she did not believe in making hollow threats. If she didn’t hear from Dax by tomorrow, she would come after her, just as she’d threatened. But then, if Dax did contact her before she was done here, get in touch just to let her know she was safe, she knew beyond all doubt that Kira would take it on herself to make certain she never came back. She’d tie her down if she had to, hold her in place and stop her from going back, and Dax was just weak-willed enough to let her.

She thought about it for a few minutes, trying to find some middle ground, but she didn’t have time to come up with an elegant solution. In the end, she just confronted Sisko, taking comfort in the knowledge that it was all his doing in the first place. He could go in her stead, she decided, and told him as much. If she wasn’t back in time to make her rendezvous with her Kira, then he would go on her behalf and update her on the situation. It was only fair, she told him, and it wouldn’t kill him to do something for her after all the loops he was expecting her to jump through.

At first, not unexpectedly, he balked at the idea, resistant far more because it involved taking orders from someone else than because it meant crossing paths with the major again. This universe’s Sisko was a man who very much hated being told what to do, and even if he would normally be understanding, or at least vaguely receptive to the necessity, hearing it spoken like a command made him instinctively recoil from it. He was the goddamn captain, he said with a snarl; things happened his way, or they didn’t happen at all.

It took some wheedling from Dax and another well-timed slap from Jadzia to convince him to suck up his macho ego and do something decent for someone else for once. He still wasn’t happy about it, but at least he was complicit, and though Dax still didn’t trust him to see his promises through, she did trust Jadzia to force him to if it came down to it.

Once that weight was off her mind, at least as well as it could be, there were no more excuses to stay, no more unfinished business to hide behind, nothing left to keep her here. Besides, Jadzia was starting to look like she’d slap her too if she asked for any more unnecessary clarification.

“All right,” she said at last, with a reluctance that she knew Jadzia wouldn’t miss. “I guess this is it.”

Jadzia grinned, though even that expression was tense; Dax could see the shadows behind her eyes, the guilt and shame of having to send someone else to do her job, the self-loathing and the fear that she couldn’t quite overcome. She was content with their preparation, but that didn’t make the moment any less of a bitter pill.

As much as she hated being put into this position, Dax found that she couldn’t be annoyed with Jadzia. In truth, she was more annoyed with herself, frustrated at her bleeding heart, the haemorrhage of empathy that had brought her here in the first place, the need to help where she should have just listened to Kira and left things alone. Jadzia was the reason she was here, but it wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t do this for herself. Dax knew that; she remembered the fear, remembered how soul-shattering her own hallucinations were. Honestly, she wouldn’t have trusted herself to infiltrate Terok Nor in that condition either. It was common sense, loathe as she was to admit it, though it didn’t really help either of them to know that.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” she promised, very softly, and mustered a grin of her own.

Jadzia looked away, unable to meet her gaze. Dax could feel the conflict radiating from her, the familiar fear, guilt and regret and shame, a thousand things all fighting for control, all overshadowed by a depth of worry that was startling. She was worried about Dax, of course, and about the success of the mission; she was worried about the life that would be on her conscience if it was lost, just as much as Dax’s own well-being. And, of course, she was worried for her own sake, for her sanity, for what would happen to her if things turned out badly and she was left to fend for herself with no medicine and no help.

So many things could go wrong, after all; if Dax failed to get hold of the drug they needed, or even if she did and the drug simply didn’t do the job, if the repressed memories and dropping isoboramine levels killed her anyway… every breath brought a new thing to worry about.

Worst of all, she knew, was the ever-present terror, the very real possibility that, even if everything went perfectly, it might still not be enough; no matter what happened, she might still be doomed to live with these hallucinations for the rest of her life, forced to ride out this impossible anger day after day. She was scared of that, more than all the rest combined; Dax knew, because she felt the same way every time she woke from another new dream or wasted another ineffectual afternoon in the holosuite. She was so incredibly scared, and Dax wished there was something she could do to ease the weight from her shoulders. Well, something a little less dubious than a suicide mission to Terok Nor, anyway.

“You’d better,” Jadzia said after a long moment; her jaw was trembling with the effort of not letting all those emotions boil over. “You’d better get back real soon. I want to hear about that scar.”

Dax laughed, clapping her on the back with a show of enthusiasm that neither of them really felt. “You will,” she promised.

Jadzia looked away. “Good.”

The word resonated, setting Dax’s teeth on edge and striking a nerve somewhere in her psyche, a flickering revenant of last night’s dream. _Good,_ the dream Jadzia had said, just before she devoured her heart. Dax shivered at the memory, but forced herself to shove it aside. Now wasn’t the time for childishness; dreams were dreams, and there was no place for them in a moment like this. So she forced herself to focus on the Jadzia that was instead, the Jadzia standing in front of her, how pale she was and how tragic.

It was harder than it should have been, she realised, saying goodbye to this woman she didn’t know, this woman she knew all too well, this woman who was and wasn’t her.

It was harder than she’d expected, too, to simply turn around and fly away, to climb into that strange unfamiliar cockpit and hope that she would remember how to pilot this ship when it came down to the wire. It was harder than she’d expected to take on a stranger’s attitude when she already wore her face. It was harder than she could ever have anticipated to look at the fear and worry and strain on that same face, the face that was hers, to squeeze fingers as long and thin as her own, to whisper hollow placations and useless promises to someone who must surely see the lie in her own traitorous eyes. It was so much harder than it should have been to walk away and leave Jadzia alone.

And yet, as she leaned in to kiss her forehead, a feather-light touch of trembling lips to delicate spots shaped so much like her own, committing to memory the life she was going to save, she found that it wasn’t so hard at all.

“Take this,” Jadzia said, breathless with urgency, leaning in even as Dax pulled back.

Her fingers were shaking even harder than the rest of her as they pressed something cool and solid into Dax’s hands. A knife, she realised, but didn’t look down; she was afraid to look at it, afraid of what she might see, afraid of remembering the dream.

Still, the gesture was unexpected, startling, and it struck Dax squarely in the chest, as keen and sharp as the weapon itself, albeit not so subtle. She swallowed past a sudden lump in her throat, trying not to think too much. A symbol of violence, of brutality, one that promised pain or protection, depending on how it was turned. Dax could not think of a better parting gift, and she let her own fingers brush against Jadzia’s in a contact that lasted just a heartbeat longer than necessary.

“Take it,” Jadzia said again. “I never fail a mission as long as I’ve got it at my side.”

Dax smiled her thanks, and tried not to think about how easily the blade could slide between her ribs.


	9. Chapter 9

At first, the solitary cockpit was almost pleasant.

As a rule, Dax tried to surround herself with as much company as possible. She was a social soul by nature, and she had become even more so than usual since Joran took up residence in her head; her thoughts had become frightening over the last couple of weeks, and she found herself trying especially hard to stay out of situations where she had no choice but to indulge them.

Still, at least for a little while, she found herself uncharacteristically relieved to have a little time all by herself. After so long spent in the company of a near-perfect mirror of herself and a not-so-perfect mirror of her friend Benjamin, all the while trying to wrap her head around a universe that was so similar and yet so vastly different to the one she was used it, she couldn’t deny that she needed a bit of a social breather. At the very least, it was a relief to no longer worry about walking in on those mirror images _in flagrante delicto_. That was a mental image she wouldn’t be able to shake for a very long time, and she shuddered all over again to think of it now.

The momentary reprieve didn’t last, though. Peace and quiet was one thing, but it wasn’t so easy to banish those unwanted thoughts once the isolation hit with full force.

She found herself wondering what Chief O’Brien would make of this place, of the subtle differences in technology, the differences in propulsion systems and controls. Admittedly, she was rather glad he hadn’t been there when she’d utterly failed to grasp the fundamental basics of piloting a ship out here ( and she was sure she could hear Torias snorting his disgust somewhere in a quiet corner of her mind, stifled by the more potent presences of Joran and Curzon), but a part of her couldn’t help thinking it would have appreciated the chief’s insights. At the very least, the Tobin in her was kind of itching for a like-minded soul to indulge his countless theories.

Of course, if that was as far as her thoughts went, it wouldn’t have been so bad. If she’d just left it at that, she would have remained content and calm in her quiet solitude. Unfortunately, thoughts of the chief inevitably led to thoughts of her other friends back on Deep Space Nine, and before she knew what was happening she found herself thinking of Julian and Kira. They'd spent some time on Terok Nor, hadn’t they? What would they have to say if they knew she was on her way there now? What stories would they have to tell? What warnings would they give?

The meagre details she remembered of their reports had already helped her to no end, but by their nature they were somewhat lacking in personal insights. How must Kira have felt, Dax wondered, to stand face-to-face with a version of herself who was as cold and cruel as the Intendant was supposed to be. It was easier for Dax; her counterpart seemed to be at least a basically decent soul, give or take the lousy hand existence had dealt her. Dax saw so much of herself in Jadzia’s hard blue eyes, and she felt a kinship with her, a familiarity that ran so much deeper than the lines on her face or the patterns of her spots. She saw herself in Jadzia, yes, but not just the young woman she was now; she saw the ghosts of Curzon and Emony, Torias and Tobin, Audrid and Lela. She saw all of them, even Joran… though of course poor Jadzia couldn’t know or understand that herself just yet. She looked at this universe’s Jadzia, and saw Dax.

How different it must have been for Kira, she thought sadly, to look into her own eyes and see a complete stranger, a cruel and twisted perversion of everything she herself held dear. How frightening it must have been.

Part of her was looking forward to meeting the Intendant, for precisely that reason: twisted curiosity and a morbid sense of fascination. Dax knew Kira Nerys very well, or she thought she did, and it made her heart ache to think of a version of her that was so calloused and so heartless. Kira, her Kira, was one of the bravest souls she’d ever met, in any lifetime, a Bajoran with the heart of a Klingon warrior. She would cut off her own arm in less than a heartbeat if she thought it would serve Bajor, and she wouldn’t even blink at the pain.

Dax couldn’t imagine any version of Kira Nerys being like the Intendant, a cold-blooded and soulless creature who cared about nothing but her own gratification, who served only her own wants and desires, who would cut off someone else’s arm without so much as blinking just to make herself a little more comfortable. She couldn’t imagine a Kira with eyes that were hollow and empty, void of all the passion and power that made Kira who she was. Every time she tried to picture it, all she could see was her own Kira’s eyes, her Nerys, a firestorm of right and good, eyes bright and beautiful, lit up with the most unfathomable strength. 

She remembered the devotion shining from those beautiful Bajoran eyes when Kira talked about Ghemor. She remembered the awe in her, the radiance. Every part of her seemed to grow soft and warm, breathtaking and heartbreaking in the same moment… and oh, the way she smiled. That smile, Kira’s smile could reduce a whole solar system to cosmic dust.

Dax remembered the urgency in her too, the ache trembling in her voice when she talked about her life and experience, the past that would chase her to the grave and the present that would hold it back, and the vast distance between them. She thought about the faith spreading out from within her every time she looked at Dax, remembered the unwavering honesty when she told her that she would survive, that she would overcome her violent memories, that she was more than what she was becoming. She thought about so many things, all of them come together in her Kira, in her Nerys…

Suddenly, she felt terribly homesick.

That was strange in itself, she supposed. Seeing the same faces she saw every day, dealing with the same problems she herself had dealt with, flying off to the same space station she’d lived in for more than two years, and yet feeling so far away from everyone and everything she knew. Bemused, she shook her head, not realising until a moment too late that there was nobody there to see it.

Suddenly, the cockpit that had felt so peaceful just a few minutes earlier felt very big and very empty. Suddenly, this whole universe felt very empty, and she herself felt very small. For a couple of seconds, she thought about telling the computer to play some music, something soft and exotic, just to drown out the silence, but it tugged unpleasantly at her heart to think of all her favourite composers and wonder if they even existed in this upside-down universe.

It was a dangerous precipice, indulging thoughts like that; Dax knew that perfectly well, and she forced herself to take a step back before she slipped and fell.

She could already sense Joran kicking away at the edges of her mind, trying to find the weakness there, trying to force his way through and inject his madness into her again. The peace and quiet was definitely gone now; solitude was dangerous, she remembered, and almost laughed at herself for forgetting.

There it was, the haze of anger, already closing in on the edges of her thoughts, just like it always did. Bitterness at Sisko for bringing her here in the first place, frustration with Jadzia for being too damned weak to deal with her problems by herself, hatred for this universe that kept so many things hidden from her. Even as she knew it was irrational, that there was no foundation for any of those feelings, that Sisko had only come for her because he truly thought it was the only thing he could do, that Jadzia was every bit as frustrated with herself for those damned weaknesses as Dax was, that she wasn’t supposed to be in this place anyway so why should she care what it hid… even as she knew all that, it didn’t help. It didn’t stop her from hating, and it didn’t quash the anger.

She hated this place. She hated these people. She—

“No.” She took a deep breath, clenching her jaw and forcing herself to bite back even some of the fury, to swallow it down along with the air. “Not this time.”

This was exactly what she’d been afraid of. There was no holosuite here, no army of imaginary warriors to help her stem the tide of rage, no fabricated villains to take the brunt of her hatred as she beat them bloody. There were no holograms to hide behind in a cockpit, no safe haven to lock herself up in, no way of venting all the things she couldn’t fight. There wasn’t even a wall she could punch, just shoddily-built bulkheads that would crumble if she so much as leaned on them. There was nothing. _Nothing_. She had nothing. She was completely alone.

What was she supposed to do? Helplessness rose up in her, lodging in her throat and making her choke, and her fingers clutched uselessly at the helm console. She could feel herself starting to panic, but what was she supposed to do?

Jadzia knew. She must have known it would come to this, must have realised just how precarious Dax’s control really was, must have understood somewhere deep inside herself that Dax would need an anchor, a grounding point to keep her sane, a weapon to drive out the madness. She must have sensed it; somehow, she must have known. Dax hadn’t even realised it at the time, but her body remembered it now. Her mind was a maelstrom, a swirling vortex of anger and fear, tangled up and feeding each other, but her body was something else entirely, and her body remembered Jadzia.

Her body remembered, and as she finally gripped the handle, new but somehow familiar, her mind remembered too.

Pain. Pain squeezed out from a curved blade and a polished handle. Pain, sheathed and belted at her hip. Pain, a last parting gift from Jadzia. Pain, clutched in a trembling fist, precious as a prayer. Pain, the blade drawn across her palm. Pain, the blood beading on her skin. Once, twice, again and again and again. Pain. Grounding and anchoring and simple. A knife to frighten the anger away, and pain to soothe the fear. Pain, hot steel sliding through cold skin. Pain. Thank the Prophets, _pain_.

The knife made a more than adequate substitute for the holosuite, and a far more efficient one than a rock wall. There was no rock in the depths of space, and a holosuite couldn’t be tucked neatly into a belt. It was all too easy to fall back on something so small and simple, something that fit so neatly into either hand. It was all too easy to draw it across one palm and then the other, back and forth until they both hurt like hell, until they hurt so much she didn’t have the strength left to be angry.

By the time she reached Terok Nor, just a few hours after departure, her hands were almost unusable.

The journey, it seemed, was the hard part. Jadzia had been right to assume that she wouldn’t meet with much resistance in trying to dock on the station. Dax’s ship was not one of Sisko’s rebel fighters, and though she was braced the whole time for a confrontation, whipcord tight and on edge nobody seemed to pay her arrival very much mind at all.

She couldn’t help wondering if Jadzia had planned it this way, not for Dax but for herself, if that was why she was so protective of the little ship. It felt like an escape plan, like an exit route carefully and deliberately left uncovered. Dax hadn’t been here for very long, but it was long enough to know that for all her bluster and belligerence, Jadzia rarely denied Sisko anything he asked for. His throwaway remark about not being allowed near her ship had puzzled Dax at the time, but now it seemed to make a kind of sense.

Jadzia, it seemed, was not nearly so dedicated to the Terran rebellion as her lover was. She had practically said as much to Dax, albeit not in so many words, and Dax decided that she wouldn’t be surprised at all if she discovered her counterpart had been planning a trip of this sort for a long while. Not that she would be able to play the same card now; if Dax did somehow manage to get out of here alive, she rather suspected that it would leave this particular bridge well and truly burned. Jadzia would have to find herself another exit route if she wanted to defect; Dax didn’t have time to worry about keeping her nose clean.

Not that she had much time to dwell on any of that, of course, with a ship waiting to be docked. Given how high-profile Terok Nor seemed to be in this universe, the lack of protocol caught her somewhat by surprise. She identified herself to some grim-faced Cardassian who glared and rolled his eyes at the viewscreen, and that was all it took; before she’d even managed to catch her breath, her bloody fingers were flying over the console again, desperately trying to remember how to dock the damn thing.

Honestly, it was all so simple and straightforward that she almost expected to be met by an army of stone-faced Cardassian security officers the second she set foot onto solid ground; that was the only explanation she could think of for the lack of security. Presumably, Terok Nor didn’t need any protection because any attempted infiltration was ended before it began.

From what little she knew about this place, it made a twisted kind of sense — why ask questions at all when you can just shoot and be done with it? — and Dax took great comfort in the kiss of blood-slick steel against her fingertips as she squeezed the blade, readying for anything.

Her palms were both wet, long thin lines of blood half-dried where she’d used the knife over and over to cut out the violence in her head, and her bruise-purple knuckles were screaming from the strain of piloting the ship. She hurt. Good, sweet, brutal pain, the kind that would keep her under control, keep her wits sharp and her attention sharper, and that was exactly what she needed if she was to survive this place.

“Well, well, well. Look who finally came crawling back.”

It wasn’t exactly the ambush she’d expected, and for a long moment Dax could only stand and stare.

“…Garak?”

She’d know the tailor’s face anywhere. The soft edges of his features, curved and sympathetic where most Cardassians were hard and streamlined, the wide-eyed faux innocence where most of his brethren would take pride in seeming hard and cold, the rich derision in every syllable out of his mouth. Though the darkness of this place had clearly left its mark on him just as deeply as it had on Benjamin and Jadzia, there could be no doubt at all that he was Elim Garak.

“There’s no need to act so shocked,” he said dryly. “This place is as much my home as it is hers, you know.”

Dax swallowed hard, struggling to regain some shred of dignity. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… that is…”

Garak rolled his eyes, bored and utterly disgusted. “Oh, spare me the niceties,” he huffed. “Say what you mean, my dear: you’re surprised she hasn’t made a throw rug out of me yet.”

Thinking on her feet, Dax mustered a shrug. “Actually,” she shot back, “I’m just surprised you haven’t made one out of her.”

That seemed to be an acceptable response, because he burst out laughing like they were old friends. “Oh, how I’ve missed your rapier wit.”

Had he really?, she wondered nervously. Was he testing her? His laughter sounded sincere enough, but as with her universe’s Garak, it was hard to pierce the surface of it, hard to tell if there really was any truth in what he was saying. This Garak was just as unsettling as the one she knew, just as hard to read, and Dax suddenly felt very much out of her depth. Jadzia hadn’t said anything about Garak being here at all. She’d only mentioned the Intendant and her voracious appetite for self-indulgence.

Well, Dax supposed, maybe she should follow her lead.

“I’m sure the Intendant has missed rather more than just my wit,” she said out loud, and tried not to blush.

Garak snorted. “Oh, I’m sure she has,” he agreed readily. “She’s been so terribly lonely over these last few months. Ever since that vagabond Benjamin Sisko decided to run away and play the rebel with his Terran friends, she’s been practically inconsolable.” Dax bit her tongue, then her lip, struggling to keep her mouth shut. “It’ll improve her mood no end to discover she’s not lost _all_ her privateers to that ridiculous cause.”

“Perish the thought,” Dax replied, smiling. “I know where my loyalties lie.”

His eyes narrowed at that. “I’ll bet you do…”

Dax swallowed again, tightening her tentative grasp on the situation before it had a chance to slip away. She straightened her spine, threw back her shoulders, willed her whole body to take on the form of a mercenary, an untouchable spacefarer with nothing to fear. If she was in any danger here, Garak would have struck her down already; that he was still standing there staring at her said that she was safe enough, and that made it less of a struggle to be bold and arrogant.

“As pleasant as this is,” she started, twisting her lips into a sneer. “I think I’ve kept the Intendant waiting for long enough, don’t you?”

Garak coughed, looking almost uncomfortable for a second or two. “Of course.” He coughed again. “Her patience is second only to your own.”

For a moment, Dax saw the Elim Garak she knew, the good-natured (if somewhat elusive) tailor, quick with his mouth but quicker still with his eyes. Was this one as attentive to detail as her Garak? Could she afford to find out?

“Exactly,” she said, giving her voice an edge. “So, if you don’t mind…”

“Of course,” he said, lowering into a sarcastic bow. “Should I take you to her immediately? Or would you like to freshen up first?” He cast a disapproving eye over her appearance, shaking his head as he took in her hands, dark with bruises on one side and slick with blood on the other, and the painful dents in her lower lip where she’d bitten blood from it again and again. “I’m sure I could find someone to make you more presentable…” His lips twitched. “Though I can’t promise miracles.”

For a second, Dax thought of taking him up on that offer, but she stopped herself before she could get the words out. If push came to shove with the Intendant — and she had no doubt it would — she supposed she could use the injuries to her advantage; it wouldn’t take much to convince her that she’d earned them in a skirmish with Sisko and his rebels, or some such thing. If she could play down the pain and play up the damage, it could get her more easily on the Intendant’s side. She just needed to play it right, keep her cards close to her chest and play the ones that fit the field; if there was one thing she’d learned from all those hours she’d lost in late-night games of tongo with Quark, it was never to throw down a card that still held some profit.

No, she decided. She would keep the blood and the bruises, wear them like badges of honour, let the little lightning-strikes of pain ground her, and wait for a chance to boast about them.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said to Garak. “You know the Intendant. She likes her tributes a little rough around the edges.”

“Indeed,” Garak deadpanned, rolling his eyes.

The forced civility between them stretched almost to breaking point as he gave another exaggerated bow, gesturing somewhat expansively for her to follow him. He moved off quickly, making his disdain clear, and didn’t even bother to look back and see if she was following; Dax had a sneaking suspicion that the two of them travelled this particular road very often, and that it grated just a little more on Garak’s waning patience each time.

Once they’d settled into a comfortable pace, he finally did turn to look back at her again, eyes narrowed. Dax met his suspicion with a condescending smile. “Is there something I can do for you?”

He rubbed his hands together, briskly, as though to warn them, and as he did, his eyes narrowed a little more. “I was just wondering…” he pondered, danger dripping from his voice. “Where _have_ you been these past few months?”

Dax knew better than to fall into that particular trap, and she forced her expression to harden. “Come now, Garak,” she said. “You don’t really expect me to tell you that.”

Garak rolled his eyes, as though he’d been expecting that. “Of course,” he muttered, more to himself than to Dax, and not bothering to hide his bitterness. “Nobody ever tells the lackey anything.”

“Exactly,” Dax said, forcing herself to sound cool and calloused, like she imagined her counterpart would, filled with the adrenaline of authority and fresh from a long time out in the vastness of space. “When you treat me as well as she does, then you can wonder all you like.”

Garak actually laughed. “Sorry to disappoint you, my dear, but you’re not my type.”

Dax returned his laugh, feeling the tension in her shoulders lessen just a little. It was a shame, she thought, that Elim Garak was so untrustworthy in any universe; it was hard enough to trust the one she knew on Deep Space Nine, and she’d known him for a couple of years now. This one was darker, dangerous; he was like everything else in this universe, glinting with promise on the rare occasion he caught the light, but as dark and deadly as obsidian the rest of the time. Trusting him would be madness; that went without saying.

Still, though, she couldn’t help thinking that under different circumstances, they would get along strikingly well. His sense of humour echoed hers nicely, and even when he was taking offence at something, he did it with a self-deprecating smile on his face, just like she did; it was comforting to see an echo of something so simple in a place so complicated, and despite her better judgement, she let herself take some comfort from it. Oh, she’d read the reports, of course and she knew all about his attempts to overthrow the Intendant, but if what those reports said about this place was to be believed, she’d more than deserved it. Better to throw her lot in with an untrustworthy Cardassian who was at least up-front about his untrustworthiness than the snake-skinned Intendant.

 _Stop it_ , she chided herself, shaking her head. She wasn’t here to pick sides or play at politics; letting herself get invested, even hypothetically, in anything here was extremely dangerous, not to mention stupid. She needed to keep her head down if she wanted any chance of surviving at all, and that meant keeping it out of their business. This wasn’t her Deep Space Nine, and these people weren’t her friends. Hell, it wasn’t even her damned universe; nothing that happened here was any of her business. _Nothing_. She needed to remember that.

It was just hard when all she could see when she closed her eyes was the fear-touched anger in Jadzia’s.

“Don’t expect a warm welcome,” Garak warned her as he slowed his pace; though the lighting was different, the layout was the same, and Dax recognised the outer levels of the habitat ring. “She’s not exactly the most trusting sort at the moment. This rebellion nonsense has her up in arms, and she’s even more unreasonable than usual. I hope for your sake that you’ve brought her a worthy tribute.” He gave her another appraising look, shaking his head with obvious disdain. “Aside from the obvious, I mean. I’m afraid a few crates of worthless contraband and a quick roll between the sheets isn’t going to cut it this time.”

Dax grimaced. Jadzia hadn’t said anything about this, either, though Dax hadn’t really been so naive as to expect a free ride . Not that it really mattered either way; she was too deep into the lions’ den to step back now. She would find a way around the Intendant; that, at least, Jadzia had taught her well, and so she shrugged off this latest blow like she did all the others, stretching and smiling and looking for all the world like she knew exactly what she was dealing with.

“Why don’t you let me worry about pleasing the Intendant,” she said, “and go back to worrying about whether your shoes match your uniform.”

It must have been a passable imitation of Jadzia’s playful menace, because Garak gave an irritated cough and picked the pace up once again.

Dax smiled as she followed, and tried not to think too hard about how good it felt to be so effortlessly intimidating, how exciting to incite such fear without even trying. She could feel the violence pulsing again at the edge of her mind, fed by the excitement, but she was in no position to pull out the knife or punch the bulkhead or employ any of her growing collection of self-control tactics; she couldn’t stifle the feeling here, not with Garak so alert and attentive, keyed in to her every breath. So, instead, because it was all she could think of, she bit down on her tongue and thought of Kira. Kira, with her passion and her strength, Kira who looked at her with such boundless faith. Kira, Kira, Kira.

The name was like a mantra, whispered inside her head, over and over in time with the pressure of her teeth against her tongue. Kira. Nerys. And bit by bit, a little more with each syllable, she felt the violence grow less, never retreating completely, but quieting just enough that she could keep putting one foot in front of the other, just enough that she could keep breathing, slow and steady, deep and even, calm and composed. Just enough, at least for now.

At last, after what felt like a lifetime of careful self-control, Garak came to a stop. Distracted as she was, it took Dax a moment to realise that they’d arrived, that the door suddenly in front of her must lead to Kira — no, to the _Intendant_. She was here, she realised dumbly. She was here and it was time. She needed to pull herself together now, to put on her best poker-face and take up the hand she’d been dealt.

 _Play the game,_ she thought, and took comfort in hazy memories of late nights in Quark’s. _Play the game. The risk’s to you, Lieutenant, so check your cards, spin the wheel, and confront, confront, confront._

“Thank you,” she said to Garak, willing herself to sound dismissive and not just nervous. “You can go now.”

He stared at her for a moment, surprised, then shrugged as if to say _‘it’s your funeral’_. Apparently, his job description did not include arguing for the sake of it, for all that she could tell he enjoyed it; besides, he seemed to relish the idea of Dax getting herself in trouble by not letting him announce her arrival, and she supposed that in itself was enough to still his tongue.

Well, she thought, let him underestimate her all he liked; the less he thought of her, the better her chances of outsmarting him when it mattered. And the Intendant too, come to think of it, though she somewhat doubted that she would be quite so easily turned away.

Once Garak left her alone, Dax took a couple of much-needed moments to brace herself. She still felt edgy, hot underneath her skin, anger and malice closing in and turning her vision red, making it hard to think. It might work to her advantage, she thought hopefully, if the Intendant was really as unreasonable as Garak implied; a little aggression went a long way when dealing with the unreasonable, Dax had learned, and even before Joran had made it so alluring she had never been afraid of raising her voice to make a necessary point. That was one thing she could still thank Curzon for, she supposed in the half-second before Joran surged up again and shoved Curzon and his honourable intentions aside.

 _There’s no room for idiots like him in a place like this,_ he told her, sweet and seductive in her mind, and Dax had to struggle again to keep from listening to him.

She looked around, checked that the corridor was all but deserted, and palmed the edge of Jadzia’s knife again. Not much, just enough to break the skin, just enough to push down the whispers, just enough to silence that sweet-deadly voice, just enough to keep that blood-streaked palm from closing into a fist. Just enough.

Her hand throbbed, a painful mess of blood and bruises, but from what she’d learned of the Intendant she suspected the damage would do her more good than harm. According to Jadzia, and Kira and Julian’s reports, the Intendant was an egotist and a sadist; no doubt she would delight in the sight of such raw wounds, take pleasure in the flicker of pain dancing behind the violence, relish the idea that Dax might have been marked to defend the Alliance’s honour against those damned dirty rebels. From what she’d learned about her, Dax suspected they would get along wonderfully. At least, if Joran had anything to say about it.

Taking a final steadying breath, she pressed the door chime.

“Enter.”

The voice alone was enough to send a chill up her spine, freezing her in place. Dax squeezed the blade of the knife one last time, steel sliding through flesh, and gulped sterile station air. It was a very long moment before she summoned the strength to slip the blade back into its sheath, and an even longer one before she found the courage to step through the waiting doors.

What she saw drove the air right out of her lungs.

She was not prepared. How could she be? Nothing in any universe could prepare her for the sight of Kira Nerys — her Kira, her Nerys — clad in a figure-hugging bodysuit, lounging luxuriantly on an overstuffed couch and fawning over an entourage of scantily-clad slaves. Nothing in any universe could prepare her for the smouldering heat in her eye, the wanton desire, the unabashed gluttony, the ravenous hunger for anything but food. Nothing in any universe could have prepared her for that.

Somewhere in the corner of her swiftly short-circuiting brain, Dax knew how important it was, now more than ever, to focus. She needed to keep her thoughts clear and her body straight, needed to keep up the facade of authority and carelessness, to behave like she would have done if she’d seen this scene a thousand times before. Now, more than ever, she needed to truly be her care-free counterpart, to truly be Jadzia. On every possible level, she knew it, and yet Dax still found herself standing there helplessly in the doorway, open-mouthed and slack-jawed, paralysed and utterly unable to do anything but stare.

“Well, well, well…” the Intendant purred, stretching languidly on the couch and turning that ravenous, wanton gaze right on Dax. “What do we have here?”

Just like that, all her careful planning dissolved, everything she’d learned so well from Jadzia disappearing as though they hadn’t even discussed it at all, her faculties abandoning her entirely and leaving behind a stammering little girl, completely in over her head. Dax floundered, flushed and speechless, fumbling to shape her useless tongue into something that sounded like words.

“Kira…?”

And just like that, the smouldering heat was gone, replaced by something hard and cold as ice. “ _Intendant_ ,” she corrected. “I admit, it’s been a while since you last showed your face around here, but surely it’s not been so long that you’ve forgotten your place?”

Dax bowed her head, grateful for the excuse to look at the floor instead. “I’m sorry, Intendant,” she mumbled; the shame came easily to her voice, hot as the blush on her skin. “I didn’t mean…”

“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t.” She heard a flurry of motion, and knew without having to look up that the Intendant was rising from the couch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw an expansive, exaggerated gesture, followed instantly by a coolly-issued command: “Leave us.”

For a fleeting and foolish moment, Dax thought the Intendant was talking to her. She was just on the brink of turning around and stumbling out the way she’d come, ashamed and awkward, when she realised that she was actually speaking to her harem of slaves. There were only three or four of them, but they all moved as one, scurrying in perfect sync to do their mistress’s bidding, so fast that Dax practically had to leap to get out of their way.

Apparently, this version of Kira liked to play with her food in private; Dax wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or terrified.

She didn’t have much time to decide either way. Before she’d even fully recovered from the stampede of fleeing slaves, she found herself thrown up against the nearest bulkhead, stars spinning before her eyes as the back of her head slammed against the solid surface. The jolt of pain grounded her, banishing the uncertainty for a moment or two, but then the Intendant pressed up against her, figure-hugging fabric pressed tight against the loose folds of her privateer’s garb and fingers wrapped around her throat, and all rational thought flew out of her head once more. Everything was a blurry haze of panic and fear and sensation, fabric and skin and Kira, and she couldn’t think at all.

“You forget yourself.” The Intendant’s voice was a hum, the pulse of a warp core about to blow, but she sounded so much like Nerys that Dax could hardly breathe. “Calling me by that name in front of them. What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” Dax admitted, and even she wasn’t sure whether the tremor in her voice was born of fear or something entirely less innocent. “I mean… I’m sorry, Intendant. It’s been a long time, and I’m not… that is… I mean, I wasn’t. Thinking. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Of course you weren’t.” The Intendant sighed, low and breathy against the shell of her ear. Every syllable, carefully enunciated, was so suggestive that Dax’s breath caught, gurgling helplessly in her closed-up throat. “That much is woefully obvious.”

Dax tried, and failed, to swallow. “It… it won’t happen again.”

“It had better not,” the Intendant said flatly.

She held her there for a few more moments, presumably to make sure the point had penetrated Dax’s obvious haze, then finally let her go, releasing her throat and pulling away. Though she knew better than to give into the weaknesses of her body, Dax couldn’t stop herself from whimpering, breathing rough and ragged as she sagged back against the bulkhead, struggling just to stay on her feet.

The Intendant stared at her for a beat, then husked a throaty chuckle. “My, my…” she said. “It really has been a while, hasn’t it?”

With a considerable effort, Dax pulled herself upright, stumbling away from the wall and holding herself steady by sheer force of will. Once again, she tried to channel Jadzia’s roguish carelessness, that cocksure confidence and steadfast refusal to care about anything. This was the only Kira that Jadzia knew, she reminded herself. This was the only Nerys she’d ever met. Jadzia wouldn’t be thrown by the sight of her, and she definitely wouldn’t be reduced to trembling by a little roughness. She’d probably think of it as foreplay.

This whole universe was a viper’s nest of physicality, it seemed; violence and sex came as second nature to almost everyone, and usually hand-in-hand. Dax couldn’t deny that there was a part of her that appreciated the raw animal instinct of it all — Curzon’s influence, probably — but it was still a difficult adjustment for someone who had spent so much time living under Federation prudishness. By her own admission, Dax was much freer with her body than most other Starfleet officers she knew, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have her own boundaries, and it was difficult adapting to this place, a place where even those few safe-words did not exist.

It had been easier with Jadzia, laughing off the sensuality of it all and taking the strangeness of the situation in stride. It was easy to laugh off the lingering touches and the lack of modesty, the physicality that skirted so close to inappropriate, easy to shrug it off and roll with it because they were both Jadzia Dax; they were both the same person, living in the same body, so why waste time on blushes and embarrassment? She was familiar and comfortable with her own body, after all; why should it be surprising to learn that another version of herself was just as familiar with hers?

But, of course, Jadzia wan’t Kira. _Kira_ was Kira, and Dax had spent the best part of two years making the very clear distinction between inappropriate physical appreciation and simple innocent friendship. Any thoughts of a Kira who looked and dressed and acted like this were locked up firmly in the most private corners of her mind, the secret subconscious that came to her only in dreams and fantasies, the last refuge of the hopelessly infatuated.

The very idea of being shoved up against the wall by a barely-dressed Kira dressed with want in her eyes… well, it wasn’t a situation she’d ever expected to have to deal with in practice, and now that it was actually happening, Dax couldn’t deny that she felt more than a little helpless. Her mind was very clear on where she needed to stand here, but her body was saying something else entirely, and they were both as loud and insistent as each other. It was too much input, an overload of conflicting thoughts and feelings, and though she knew how important it was to stay in character, it really was all she could do just to stay upright, much less to remember that all of this was supposed to be coming as second nature.

“Intendant,” she stammered, locking her knees to keep from falling. “I need—”

But the Intendant didn’t want to hear it. “I’m sure you need plenty of things,” she said, waving a dismissive hand, and Dax flushed hotly when she realised what she meant. “A lesson in etiquette, for one.” Her smile turned softer, and yet somehow more sinister at the same time. “But business before pleasure, hm? What did you bring me?”

Dax didn’t have an answer, and she must have floundered for a moment or two too long, because the Intendant started tapping her foot, looking deadly.

“I…” she managed. “I mean, well… I didn’t…”

“You didn’t?” Suddenly, the Intendant didn’t look or sound anything at all like Kira Nerys. “You _didn’t_?”

Her eyes narrowed, and her lips did too, thinning until they were nothing more than a thin line, a slash of displeasure across her face. Suddenly, Dax’s body was giving her an entirely new set of signals — _‘run! run for your life!’_ — and suddenly it was taking every ounce of strength she possessed not to heed those cries, to turn around and flee while she still could. Even Joran had abandoned her now, it seemed; whatever vestige of fury still existed within her was nowhere to be found now, no doubt cowering in a corner just like the rest of her, the deranged maniac seemingly just as wary of this woman as Jadzia and Curzon, and all the others were.

“I was busy,” she forced out, willing her voice to harden into steel, even as the rest of her quaked and trembled, clenching her teeth and hoping it would look more like ire than terror. “You’re not the only one who has things to do, you know.”

She didn’t see the Intendant move, though, she must have done, because the next thing Dax knew was a swirl of stars and a reeling bolt of queasy pain. She was sprawled on her back, she realised as her vision cleared, jaw aching and head pounding. Kira’s shapely hips swayed above her, and the thin line of her mouth was curled up into a smile that was anything but amused.

“I could have you killed for that,” she said. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”

Dax struggled to her feet, rubbing her tender jaw and smearing it with blood. “You’d miss me too much,” she offered weakly.

The Intendant huffed. “Sadly, I’m afraid you’re right. It’s so hard to find good entertainment these days.”

She looked at Dax for a moment, piercing and suspicious, and for a heart-stopping moment Dax was certain that she’d blown her cover somehow. Were her spots patterned differently to Jadzia’s? Did the Intendant really know her counterpart well enough to tell if they were? She hadn’t thought to check little things like that back in the rebel camp, and now she was kicking herself for the oversight. How could she explain it? Could she fabricate some elaborate lie about Trill physiology? But then, what if the Intendant knew about Trill physiology? What if she—

“You’re hurt.”

—oh.

In the flurry of overwhelming sensation and emotion, Dax had almost forgotten her brutalised hands. She jerked them quickly behind her back, clasping them together and drawing strength from the pulse of pain.

“It’s nothing,” she insisted.

“You’ve always been a terrible liar, my dear.”

That was true enough, Dax supposed, and conceded the point with a shrug. “Well, it’s nothing serious, anyway.”

The Intendant sauntered forwards. She closed the space between them in a single long stride, pressing in close and tripping playful fingertips down the length of Dax’s arms, bare beyond the shoulder-short sleeves of Jadzia’s loose-fitting shirt. Dax’s pulse began to race, heart pounding with a surge of fresh adrenaline, excitement that had nothing whatsoever to do with the ache in her jaw or the blood-soaked bruises on her hands. She swallowed hard as thin fingers wrapped tight around her wrists, tugging her hands back out in front of her.

“Come, now,” the Intendant pressed, softly seductive. “I think we’re both past the point of modesty, don’t you?”

Dax squeaked helplessly. “I…”

The Intendant chuckled, chiding but sober. “You silly thing. Let me take a look.”

What choice did she have but to comply?

The Intendant was shockingly gentle as she studied the mess of Dax’s self-inflicted suffering. It was a sharp and unexpected contrast to the violence of a moment before, and Dax found herself reeling once again. The look on her face was sorrowful, almost reverent, and as she leaned forward to press a possessive kiss to the angry dark bruises, tongue flicking out to taste the blood, Dax could have sworn she saw the ghost of Nerys behind her eyes.

“Who did this to you?” the Intendant demanded after a moment. There was fire in her eyes now, passion so much like Kira’s, and it burned. “Who dared to mark my property?”

“Your property?” Dax snapped, then ducked reflexively in anticipation of a blow. It didn’t come, though; the Intendant just continued staring at her hands like she hadn’t spoken at all. Annoyed, Dax pulled her hands back, hiding them behind her back once more. “Nobody did anything to me,” she said. “And even if they had, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

“Dangerous words,” the Intendant warned. She didn’t raise a hand, but Dax could tell she wanted to. “On this station, everything is my business. You know that as well as I do.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve not been away that long, and feigning forgetfulness won’t protect you. Remember your place, or get out of my sight.”

How would Jadzia play this?, Dax wondered. Would she bow her head and apologise, swear fealty to this dark and deadly woman who seemed to hold the whole sector in her hands, or would she be all the more defiant just because she’d been told not to? Both seemed almost as viable as the other, and she had no idea how far Jadzia’s arrogance went, how close to the edge she was willing to go to prove her point, or how deeply she was in the Intendant’s pocket.

Truth be told, she didn’t even really know what she herself would do in this situation. She’d never been down at heel to anyone before in her life. Not in any of her lives, in fact, and though Curzon and Lela had done their share of grovelling as diplomat and litigator, they had never been threatened or hurt if they didn’t comply. Their heads were bowed by ambition, not necessity. They grovelled because they wanted to, because it was part of their job, because…

…because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t get what they want.

Just like her.

That was all Dax needed remember why she was here, and there was her answer. It didn’t matter what the Intendant thought of her; she was not Kira Nerys, so why should Dax care if she thought of her as a spineless mercenary? What did she care if she thought anything at all, just so long as she got Jadzia’s benzocyatizine out of her? What did she care about the politics of this station, or its inhabitants? She had a job to do, and if she had to play the submissive boot-licker to get it, then so be it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, bowing her head and biting down on her lip. “You’re right. I did forget my place.”

“Yes,” the Intendant said. “You did.” She cupped her chin and forced her to meet the fire-forged steel of her eyes. “You disappear for months at a time, then come sauntering back like you never left, without so much as a trinket in tribute. And then, if that’s not bad enough, you talk down to me like I’m some lowly _Terran_.” She spat. “It’s simply unacceptable. You may not be one of them, little Trill, but I can put you to work just as easily if you push me too far.”

Dax swallowed. “I know,” she lied. “And I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.”

“I should hope so,” the Intendant retorted, releasing Dax’s face and letting her head drop back down. “Now, then. Let’s try again, shall we?” The threat was palpable. “What happened to your lovely hands?”

It was exactly the question that Dax had been hoping for, the perfect opportunity to slide her way into the Intendant’s good graces. Here was her opportunity to claim the wounds as marks of Alliance honour, trophies won in a skirmish with the rebels. She could even blame Sisko himself, if she wanted to, and fuel the fire of the Intendant’s bitterness over his betrayal. If the Intendant thought for one moment that she’d been bruised and bloodied by the very man who she hated so much, the game would be won without another word from either of them.

The path was sure, as clear and easy as anything Dax had ever done in her life, and yet the lie would not come. She felt ill at ease, wholly out of her depth, and it was all she could do just to look the Intendant in the eye and not see her Nerys. She was hanging on by less than a thread to every lie she told, and the more widely she stretched the truth, the more obvious she felt. There were too many balls in the air, too many cards in play, too many wheels spinning and dice rolling, and even Quark would retreat if he was here right now. She knew it. Deep inside, where her heart trembled against her ribcage, she knew she couldn’t get away with it. Not here, not yet. Not while she was still reeling, not while Kira’s face was so close, not until she remembered how to breathe.

Maybe Jadzia could pull it off, but she wasn’t here and she was no more use to Dax now than Quark. It was just her, just Dax and the scream in her head and the pain in her hands and this fire-eyed woman who was not Kira, this passion-crazed Bajoran who could never be Nerys.

She was in too deep, tangled up in a web of lies and deceit, words and names she couldn’t remember and thoughts that were not hers. She was lost, stumbling and stupid, and the only thing she could count on in that moment was the truth. And so, hating herself for her weakness, she told it.

“It was me,” she admitted. The words were out before she had a chance to second-guess them, and a shiver tickled up her spine. It felt strange to say the words out loud, shameful to admit the truth of it. “I got angry and there was nobody around for me to hit. So I hit the wall instead.”

The Intendant quirked a brow. Dax balled her fists behind her back, sucking in her breath at the pain, then grimaced as the Intendant pulled them back out in front of her, turning them over so the blood-lined palms faced upwards. “Is that all you did?” she asked, breath suddenly shallow.

“No.” It was by pure reflex that Dax reached for the handle of the knife, still sheathed safely at her hip, a demonstration without the need to say the words. “That’s not all.”

The Intendant took a long step back, and Dax recognised the same smouldering look that she’d cast on her slaves, ravenous and wanton. She wanted to duck her head, to sidestep the heat, but she was trapped like a Cardassian vole staring down the barrel of a phaser-rifle, helpless and reduced to incoherent squeaking. She gripped the knife a little tighter, swallowing back the bite of pain.

“You poor little thing,” the Intendant purred, watching her with fever in her eyes. “How difficult it must have been for you, out there in the depths of space with nobody to talk to… all alone for all those months without a soul to share your troubles with…”

The words had the taste of a trap, or at least an innuendo, but Dax didn’t know how to dodge it. “Is it any wonder that my first thought was coming back here to you?” she asked, recalling what Jadzia told her about the Intendant’s malignant narcissism. She let her voice get low, the tone shaping itself unnaturally to her mouth. “I really, _really_ missed you.”

“Oh, I can tell.” The Intendant chuckled, rising to the bait just as Jadzia had said she would. “Otherwise you wouldn’t dare show your face in my quarters without a tribute.”

“Exactly,” Dax agreed readily, allowing herself a moment to think of Nerys, to remember her passion and her faith, to help the lie go down easier. “You cloud my judgement.”

The Intendant chuckled, all false modesty and razor-edged smiles. “I’ve been told I have that effect,” she said, then sighed. “You really should consider yourself lucky, you know. It’s been so boring here since that low-life pirate Benjamin Sisko ran off to start his little ‘rebellion’.” She hissed, then seemed to catch herself and stared at Dax again, lust in those fire-burned eyes. “Besides, you know I can’t resist those delectable spots of yours.”

Dax swallowed; her mouth was suddenly dry, and the room felt unbearably hot. “Thank you, Intendant.”

“You’re very welcome.” That sinister smile turned even sharper, a warning or a promise, or some twisted hybrid of the two. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter anyway. What would I do with another crate of useless contraband?” She leered, licking her lips. “No, no, no. I can think of far more enjoyable ways for you to pay tribute to me…”

The implication was obvious. Dax opened her mouth, desperate to say something, but she couldn’t make a sound. It was as though her throat had closed up completely; she could still feel the the Intendant’s fingers tight around her neck as she squeezed, could still feel the solid coolness of the bulkhead as she was thrown against it, could still feel that figure-hugging fabric rustling against her, warm and tight and— oh, she was in trouble. She was in so much trouble.

She had to get out of this. She had to run away, even blow her cover if that was what it took, to do anything, everything, to do whatever she could to keep this from happening. There were so many reasons why it couldn’t, so many reasons why she needed to come back to herself, to find her voice, to stop this now, while she still could before it went too far, before it got too dangerous, before—

_No._

The stakes were too high, her inner tongo player was crying. The risk was too great, the cards weren’t right, and the wheel was jammed. She had to evade, she had to retreat, she had to—

“Come here.”

Dax groaned. Ignoring the instruction would be suicide, and she knew it. The Intendant would strip her anyway, and flay her while she was at it. She knew that, knew that she had to obey, but she could no more move than she could speak. She was rooted to the spot, paralysed with fear and panic and something that she desperately hoped was not desire (but oh, she still looked like Nerys, didn’t she? she looked so much like her…). To obey or to run away, what did it matter? She couldn’t think, could scarcely breathe; how was she supposed to move in either direction?

She could hear Joran whispering in the back of her mind, tickling words like fingertips along the edge of her spine, telling her how delightful it would be, how close the Intendant was to the Kira she wanted (but how could he know that when she’d tried so hard to keep it hidden?), how similar she was to her Nerys. His smile was sharper than hers, and more dangerous too, a blade inside her head just as keen as the one at her hip. He twisted that blade in deep and sharp, telling her again and again how good it would feel, how wonderful to yield to her at last — no, no, to make her yield — and before she knew what was happening, her eyes were rolling up into the back of her head, and her knees were buckling.

The Intendant shrugged as Dax sank to the floor, watching her with the lazy carelessness of someone who was just going through the motions of politeness, someone who didn’t really care how this happened, so long as it did, and Dax realised in a sudden panic that she didn’t care about anything at all. She didn’t care what Dax wanted. She didn’t care what Dax thought or felt, or even who she was. She was the Intendant, and she would have her tribute one way or the other.

“Very well,” she said, and took a step forward. “If that’s how you want it…”

 _But I don’t,_ Dax tried to scream. _I don’t want it like this, I don’t want you like this, I don’t want her like you!_

She wanted to lash out, to kick and fight and struggle, to harness every last ounce of Joran’s hate and rage and fury, to use every weapon she had, to get the Intendant away from her, to destroy this woman who wore Kira’s face but was not her Nerys, to separate herself from this moment, this forbidden thing, this chance to make real what she had dreamed of so often and never imagined she would truly experience (and definitely not like this, oh no, never like this…).

She wanted to drown in Joran, to drown in his violence, to thrive on the pain in her hands, the bruises and the blood and everything, to drink it all down and let it fuel her, let it burn in her until she’d branded her mark on the Intendant’s perfect skin — on _Kira’s_ perfect skin. She would give anything to be Joran just then, to be ruthless and violent and so full up with hate that she could tear this woman to pieces before she could lay a hand on her. She wanted… she wanted…

But then, Joran wanted too. He wanted this, just like the Intendant did. Violence didn’t just come from killing, he reminded her, and Dax’s body responded. Traitorous, hateful, it responded, growing flushed and heated as though by instinct, reacting, aching, _wanting_. There could be pain in pleasure, he reminded her, and what could be more painful or pleasurable than this?

 _Didn’t you dream about this?_ , he demanded. _Didn’t you wake up all those lonely nights soaked with sweat and need, aching and sticky and desperate for a moment just like this?_

 _Not like this,_ she thought, trembling. _Not like her._

 _But why not?_ , he asked. _Why not this? Why not her? They’re all the same aren’t they? So why not?_

She had no answer to that. She had nothing at all.

 _Let her,_ he urged, so much more seductive than the Intendant. _Let her take you. Then you can take her too._

The Intendant was right above her now, so much passion aflame behind her eyes that Dax could almost believe she really was Kira. There was a kind of urgency in her, too, uncontrolled and unrestrained; it was intoxicating, at least to the part of her that was Joran.

Dax closed her eyes, tried to think of her other self, the Jadzia who was going through all of this alone, the Jadzia who was depending on her to see this mission through, the Jadzia who had nobody else. It hurt less to think of her than than to think of Kira, imagining her passion when the Intendant’s eyes flashed. It hurt less to think of Jadzia, frightened and hallucinating, than to realise that Joran was right, that she really had dreamed about this moment, that there was a part of Dax that wanted this too. Even before Joran, even before any of this, she had wanted this.

It hurt less to think of that other Dax, a Dax made dark by a darkened universe, than it did to think of herself, to realise that she wanted this woman, this twisted Intendant who stood over her, this imperfect image of Kira Nerys taking her face in her hands, looking into her eyes, holding her and taking her and claiming her.

“Jadzia,” she heard herself whispering, over and over until it was the only thing she could say, the only thing she could think, the only thing in the world that didn’t hurt. “Jadzia, Jadzia, Jadzia…”

When she finally opened her eyes again, vision gone cloudy, the Intendant was smiling. “Such a delectable narcissist,” she purred. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

She leaned in, teasing and enticing, lips hovering barely a breath away from Dax’s own, lust and need and want, passion surging between them too hot to bear. The Intendant would have her, take her, claim her, and as she leaned in, breath ghosting across the blood on her lips, it was by pure reflex that Dax felt her own body surging up, closing the space, meeting the Intendant’s hungry mouth and bearing up with a savagery that surprised them both.

 _Claim this,_ she thought, and bit down hard.

She would claim the Intendant too. Just like Joran wanted, just like Dax wanted. She wasn’t Kira, wasn’t her Nerys, but she had her face and she had her voice, and sometimes her eyes took flame in the same way. She wasn’t hers, and she never would be, but Dax could claim her just the same. She could make her want to be hers, then laugh because she never would be. And maybe that would hurt too, but she would survive. As long as the weapon was in her own hand, she could claim the pain as well.

Joran was right, she decided. Pain could be pleasurable.

It would have to be.


	10. Chapter 10

The Intendant wasted no time.

Her quarters were luxuriant to say the least, a study in excess and extravagance that screamed of ancient stories, royalty and decadence, things abandoned long before the stripped-down days of the Federation. The couch alone was almost the size of Dax’s entire bedroom back on Deep Space Nine; she could scarcely imagine how soft it must be, or how many slaves had died so that she could own it.

She didn’t get much time to indulge such thoughts, of course, because the Intendant ground her hips down hard, and the question flew from Dax’s mind along with everything else as that ridiculous skin-tight fabric pressed in all the right places against the loose-fitting leather of Dax’s privateer’s outfit. 

Suddenly, the few short metres between the two of them and that luxuriant-looking couch seemed like an impossibly great distance.

She moaned. Though she knew it was dangerous, it seemed that her body had a mind of its own, arching up to meet the tantalising pressure, fabric sliding over fabric, over skin, over _her_ , Bajoran hips sharp and hard against the curves of a belly made taut by the symbiont within. It was all she could do to keep from crying out, to keep from screaming as the Intendant met her teeth and tongue with eager reciprocity, aggressive almost to the point of violence — almost to the point of Joran — as she returned in kind everything Dax tried to take from her. Stars exploded behind her eyes, passion and fury, and she found that she couldn’t breathe.

“How long?” the Intendant murmured, pulling back to bare her teeth against the curve of her throat as Dax scrambled hopelessly to make sense of the question. “How long has it been?”

“Too long.” She was panting, she realised; the Intendant hadn’t even touched her, and already she was panting. “Too long.”

That was true enough, far more for Dax than Jadzia, but of course the Intendant didn’t need to know that. She certainly didn’t need to know how deep that truth ran, how the only release she’d found in months had been drawn out of a body aching for Kira Nerys, sweat and heat and desire, carefully contained in the safe haven of her bedroom so that not a trace remained by the time she got to Ops. The Intendant didn’t need to know that it was her face Dax saw when she closed her eyes, her body she imagined covering hers. She didn’t need to know any of it.

And yet, from the gleam in her eye, she did know. Dax hadn’t said a word, but still the Intendant knew.

She leaned back, eyes impossibly dark as they reflected Dax’s own, and it was all Dax could do to keep from reaching up and pulling her back in, claiming her again, taking her mouth, taking her. She didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to drown in those dark eyes, those beautiful Bajoran eyes. Kira’s eyes. Kira’s eyes and Kira’s passion and Kira’s heart, Kira’s hands and her lips, the sharp edges of her jaw, the press of her body, of warmth and heat and Kira—

 _No._ She wouldn’t think of that. She couldn’t let herself remember that this woman was Kira. But then, at the same time, it was impossible to forget. She didn’t want to think of Kira at all, but it was so hard to keep her mind clear when the Intendant looked at her like that, when her eyes flashed so much like Kira’s, when her breath hissed through her teeth, so intense and ferocious, when she leaned in, over her and on top of her, commanding and possessing, a ground-down promise of roughness and tenderness and everything in between. It was impossible. Faced with all that, how could she hope to forget the Kira she knew, the Kira she missed, the Kira her body and her heart still ached for?

Kira Nerys was her friend. A good friend, and a good person, a hero to her people, and it was wrong for Dax to taint her like this. It would be wrong if it was anyone, but especially Kira, especially her Nerys, the friend who was not hers at all. It was wrong to be pressed up against a body that was hers but didn’t belong to her, wrong to see her face, wrong to remember beautiful Bajoran eyes, on fire with faith. It was wrong to see her, wrong to think of her, wrong to feel for her. Illicit dreams and feverish fantasies were one thing, but this was real; the body on top of her was real, and the face smiling down at her was real too.

She felt dirty, unclean, so much worse than illicit. Nobody could control their dreams, and fantasies were as safe as holosuites. There was no shame in a little imagination, Dax knew, but there was nothing imagined in any of this. The Intendant was real, and she really was Kira Nerys.

“Stop,” she managed, trying to sit up. 

The Intendant, of course, ignored her. Dax was her property now, just like everything else on this station, and she’d be damned if she’d be told what to do by something she owned.

“Poor dear,” she murmured, leaning back in to press her tongue to the spots under Dax’s jaw; in spite of herself, Dax groaned at the contact. “To go so long without a lover’s touch…”

“Don’t,” Dax forced out, the syllable coming as a whimper.

“Did you make do by yourself, I wonder?” She was relentless; Dax shivered, feeling the curve of her smile against the side of her neck, sharp teeth nipping the skin, branding but not breaking as she answered her own question. “Of course you did. You’re such an unrepentant narcissist, I’m sure you had a thousand ways to keep yourself… entertained…”

Dax closed her eyes, struggled to drown out the sound of her voice, Kira’s voice twisted into something new, something perverse. “Don’t,” she said again. “Kira…”

Those animal-sharp teeth sank in deep at that, finally breaking the skin. No doubt she thought it was a warning, or perhaps a punishment, but Dax took strength from the sting, revelled in the prick of blood. 

“What have I told you about that?” the Intendant snarled when she pulled back. “You have no right to call me by that name.”

Dax closed her eyes, focused on the marks at her neck, sharp pain and fresh blood. It ignited something within her, a new wave of the rage she’d fought so hard to keep at bay. She didn’t fight it now; she didn’t exactly indulge it either, but she let it bolster her, let it feed the drying dregs of her courage as it trickled away.

“I’ll call you what I like,” she muttered, hearing the words echo with Joran’s voice.

The Intendant fisted her hair, rough, and yanked her head back. Dax sucked in a sharp breath at the discomfort, but did not cry out, taking that pain along with the rest. Irked by the lack of response, the Intendant leaned back in, tongue pressed flat against the mark on her neck, soothing the sting for a moment and then biting down again, harder.

It was a warning this time, a threat, the promise of a worse punishment to come if Dax continued to defy her. Maybe that kind of thing would work on Jadzia, but the Dax beneath her now was someone else entirely. The Intendant didn’t know about the hate bubbling under the surface of her skin; she didn’t know about the anger, the violence, and she certainly didn’t know that the danger would turn itself back on her, fierce and unstoppable as a tidal wave if she did not back away now.

“Are you forgetting your place again?” she demanded, voice as rough as her tongue and sharp as her teeth. “Do I have to remind you?”

“No,” Dax panted.

She tried again to sit up, but the movement only served to press her body more firmly against those perfectly pointed hips. The anger still throbbed through her veins, just as heated as the desire she was trying so desperately not to feel, and between them both, Dax felt as though she had been split in two, her body writhing with two very different kinds of desperation, nerves permanently on the brink of one kind of violence or the other.

“Are you sure about that?” the Intendant demanded, amusement colouring her temper.

“Yes.” The word was a whine. “You don’t have to remind me of anything, Intendant. I know who you are.”

“But do you know who _you_ are?”

And then, all of a sudden, Dax had hands to worry about as well as tongue and teeth and hips, strong sure fingers squeezing roughly at the curve of her breast, so much closer to pain than pleasure (but then, pain was pleasure, wasn’t it?). She gasped, choked, wishing she could fight off her body’s responses, or at least her mind’s desires, one or the other. Something, anything. How could she win if she couldn’t fight at all? How could she best the Intendant when she couldn’t even defeat herself?

“Do I need to remind you? She hummed for a moment, feigning thoughtfulness, then laughed. “ Or perhaps you’d prefer to do it yourself?”

Dax opened her mouth to tell her that it wasn’t necessary, that she knew exactly who she was, but every atom in her body was telling her the opposite. She didn’t know. That was the painful truth. Was she Jadzia or Joran? Which part of her ached for Kira Nerys, arching up into those hands, that mouth, those familiar curves? Which part of her was wet and wanting, more and more with every jolt of pain? Which part of her ached and which part hurt? Who was she, this sick and sordid Dax who let herself respond to this?

The Intendant laughed at her wordlessness; again, she answered her own question. “Yes,” she murmured, thumb pressed against a hardening nipple and, oh, how Dax hated — loved — _hated_ this… “Yes. I think perhaps you should remind me who you are.”

“What—” Dax started, but her breath hitched as the Intendant squeezed her breast again, then bit her shoulder.

“Hush now,” she purred. “Show, don’t tell.”

She pulled back once again, and Dax gasped with relief as her body became her own again, at least as much as it was ever hers any more. The reprieve lasted less than a moment, though, and then the Intendant was reaching for her again, capturing her wrists and bringing her arms up, pulling them in close to study the mottled blue-and-red of her injured hands, tongue trailing over the shallow cuts along her palm, tasting and tempting.

“Tell me, dear…” she pressed in a low murmur. “Just how badly damaged are those lovely hands of yours?” She caressed the undersides of Dax’s wrists, as close to tender as she was capable of, and licked another line of blood from her palm. “Can you still use them?”

Dax clenched her jaw, struggling to rise above the Intendant’s voice, the rough pressure of her tongue, the blood and the bruises and the sweet, sweet pain.

“I don’t…”

But trying to speak was futile, and trailed off into another hopeless whimper as the Intendant drew back and traced her thumb across the trail her tongue had just drawn, digging in with the edge of her nail across the thin red lines; they looked so small, so thin and insignificant, but that didn’t stop it from hurting like hell. The pain was just as sharp even without the blood flowing fresh, as biting and brutal as if it was, and it made Dax shudder, a ripple of anger-turned-desire quivering through her, so much more intoxicating than pain should be.

“Oh…” she gasped, grasping desperately, palm closing into a fist over the Intendant’s thumb, the white-hot pain of her nail mingling with the dull pounding throb of the bruises cracking across her knuckles.. “…oh.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She chuckled, trailing kisses back up to the low-cut collar of Dax’s borrowed shirt, and licked a slow path back up the sensitive line of spots. She came to rest just under Dax’s ear, breath hot and hungry as her teeth teased the hyper-sensitive skin, barely even tickling. Dax clenched her jaw, trying not to sob, struggling to keep herself under control, but she could barely think through the red haze of heat and want.

“Please…” she rasped, but she had no idea what she was begging for.

“Yes,” The Intendant laughed, breath and teeth and lips. “All those lonely months, out there with just those poor wounded hands for company… no wonder you’re so eager. No wonder you’re so hungry. No wonder you’re so…”

“Don’t,” Dax pleaded again. “Don’t.”

The Intendant pulled away. “Oh, don’t you worry,” she said, inching back, and Dax gasped with relief as cool air flooded in to balm her overstimulated body. “I won’t.”

Dax was panting. “Thank—”

“ _You_ will.”

For a moment, Dax didn’t understand. She just blinked and gaped, body still trembling as it fought off the influx of contradictory sensations. “What?” she managed pathetically.

“You heard me.” The Intendant’s face was like stone, like a Cardassian. “Put those poor abused hands to good use.” There was danger in her eyes, the colour of obsidian. “Show me exactly how you kept yourself entertained in that cramped little tin-can you call a ship. Show me how you passed the time, out there all alone with no-one to talk to and no-one to interrupt.” Her lips curled into a deadly smile, and Dax shivered. “Show me all the dirty things you did to yourself while you thought of me.”

Dax choked; the very idea sent another jolt of heat right through her, unwitting and unwanted, and she shut her eyes in a desperate bid at banishing it.

 _What’s the problem?_ , demanded a voice inside her head, Joran or Curzon, she couldn’t tell. _It would hardly be the most sordid thing you’ve ever done, would it?_

That was true enough, but it didn’t help. Every part of her was alight with sensation, skin too sensitive, nerves too exposed, but it felt so good that she could barely stand it. The violence surged in her, rushing up and out through her hands, pouring in to fill the space where the new blood flowed. Her limbs felt like they were on fire, her muscles twitching on the edge of spasm, like they didn’t know whether to seek out pleasure or pain or both, and the sight of Kira’s face warped into a cold cruel smile — an Intendant’s smile — sent a pulse right through her, igniting the blood on her hands and the heat she’d tried so hard to douse between her legs.

It wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever done, that was true; even before she knew about Joran, the Dax symbiont had a list of perversions light-years long. But that didn’t help, not now. Everything about this felt so wrong, so twisted and discordant, but she couldn’t suppress the ache, the desire and the heat, need and want and pain, the sight of Kira’s face and the sound of her voice, and the irrepressible knowledge that it was not her, that it was all wrong, all so very wrong, that this wasn’t the Kira she knew, wasn’t the Kira she wanted—

—but oh, she did want her. This black soul, this deadly sadist drawing out the pain and feeding the violence, whispering promises and threats to the darkest parts of her, enticing and encouraging. She wanted this. She wanted the Intendant. She wanted…

 _Joran_ wanted. And what Joran wanted, Dax got.

“Show me,” the Intendant murmured, seductive and dangerous. “Show me how you entertained yourself.”

“Don’t you want me to entertain you instead?” Dax breathed, scrabbling futilely at the lush carpet, seeking any kind of support, any kind of balance.

The Intendant smiled, wet lips at her jaw. “Oh, you will.” Her teeth flashed, and so did her eyes. “All in good time, my impatient little Trill. But first…”

She waved a hand, and Dax let out a low whimper. How could she argue with that? Even if she wanted to, she was powerless: her body and the symbiont’s fractured memories were already taking sides with the Intendant, already lowering her shoulders back against the carpet, hands sliding over the unfamiliar fabric of her own clothing — Jadzia’s clothing — and down towards the pressure of strong hips wrapped in skin-tight fabric, pressed against her own.

She closed her eyes, forced herself to think of Jadzia, the woman who should be wearing these clothes, the woman who should be making love to this Kira, the woman whose place she had taken. She thought of that Jadzia, of her quick wit and the curved blade of her knife, of isoboramine and benzocyatizine, of Trill and Terok Nor, of Benjamin Sisko and Joran Belar, of—

“I’m waiting.” The Intendant kissed her, sudden and possessive. “Don’t tell me all that solitude has made you shy.”

Did Jadzia do this? Dax shivered at the thought, desire striking sharper than lightning inside her. Was this part of the ‘good work’ she claimed to do for the Intendant? Was it part of the ‘easy living’ she missed so badly? Dax wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know the answer, but it gave her some meagre consolation to think that maybe she wasn’t the only Jadzia Dax to harbour illicit thoughts and feelings for Kira Nerys.

She thought of that Jadzia as she slid her hand down, the one from this universe, the one who should be here instead. She remembered all too clearly the sounds she’d made last night as she made love to Benjamin Sisko. Did she think of the Intendant when she slept with him? Did she imagine slender fingers curled inside her, soft Bajoran skin in the place of Sisko’s unyielding hardness? Did she ache for whispered threats, sordid seduction instead of indifference and simplicity? Did she close her eyes and imagine thin sinew in all the places where Sisko was rough and strong? Did she cling to the memory of a different kind of authority, a different kind of passion, a different kind of sex?

Her body responded of its own accord, enjoying the thought even as she hated it. Her hips lifted, aching, to meet the path of her hand as she slipped beneath the fabric, skin on skin, the familiarity of her own touch suddenly strange and thrilling under the Intendant’s watchful gaze. She saw the lust in her eyes, the desire and the want, urgent and unabashed, and turned her face away; she couldn’t bear the sight of Kira looking at her like that, so hungry and so wild, like she wanted nothing more than to devour her. It hurt, almost more than the throbbing of her bruised knuckles as she flexed her fingers, and much more than the shallow cuts as her open palm pushed past the scratchy mercenary’s clothing, sliding over her abdomen and feeling the staccato shifting of the symbiont within.

 _Dax,_ she thought, and wished that she could shield her next host from these memories.

“Good,” the Intendant said, and Dax’s tongue flooded with the memory of meat and muscle, of a dead lover’s heart, of blood pouring down her throat, gorged on death.

She pressed her face to the carpet, choking down a moan as her hand slid lower and her hips rose higher. Though she still couldn’t bring herself to look up, she could feel the Intendant’s eyes on her, could see the passion and the fire etched indelibly on the screen of her mind. She could see and feel and sense it all, as though she were looking right at her, and as her fingers found the slick flesh throbbing between her thighs (ready, so ready, too ready…) she couldn’t quite keep herself from imagining, remembering, gasping—

“— _Kira_.”

In less than the time it took to finish the word, those thin Bajoran fingers were wrapped around her throat again, this time squeezing hard enough to bruise, more shades of purple to add to her collection. Dax choked, struggling for breath, but the Intendant held her too tight, thumb pressed with impossible brutality against her larynx, cutting off any hope of air.

“What have I told you about calling me that?”

Dax tried to apologise, but she couldn’t breathe. How could she apologise when she couldn’t breathe? How could she say anything at all when her vision was closing in and the world was darkening around her? She thrashed, as best she could, but that only made things worse; it drove her forward, bucking, pressing her throat even further into the Intendant’s vice-like grip and pushing her own fingers even more tightly against herself. She couldn’t breathe, but she could feel, and she felt everything.

It was terrible, worse than terrible, but her body reacted like it was wonderful, like it was the best she’d ever had, sense and sensation, fear and feeling, too much but not enough. Another desperate sob tried to claw its way out through the her crushed throat, but all that managed to escape through between the Intendant’s fingers was a horrible choking gurgle. Her eyes rolled back, and the last thing she saw before she gave up on trying to see anything was that sick and sadistic smile tainting Kira’s beautiful face.

“Such a pity,” Kira’s voice murmured sadly, pressing her lips to Dax’s jaw with reverent sorrow. “You used to be so obedient…”

Without warning, she pulled her hand away. Dax gulped air, so desperate to fill her lungs that the urgency almost made her gag. Her throat hurt, a battered pulsing throb that echoed the pain in her knuckles as her fingers still worked between her legs, but she couldn’t gag and she couldn’t rest. Not with the Intendant still hovering over her, not with her hand still so close to her throat, ready to strangle her again, completely this time, if she didn’t get what she wanted.

“In…” she forced out as soon as she could, and her lungs screamed because they still weren’t full enough. “In… ten… dant…”

That twisted smile turned softer, almost sweet. “Much better,” she purred, and when she drew back there was honest affection in those firestorm eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

She kissed her again, brief and light. Dax wanted to kiss her back, but she did not have the strength. Her throat felt raw and beaten, her lungs no better, and what little energy she did still have was being spent with increasing fervour between her legs. It hurt. Her hands, her throat, even the throbbing heat turned slicker and wetter by her aching fingers. Everything hurt, all of her, but nothing hurt quite so much as the flash of Kira reflected in the Intendant’s smile.

“I’m sorry…” she forced out, heaving sobs in between desperate lungfuls of air. “I… I’m… I’m sorry…”

The Intendant smiled again, that dazzling smile etched with just enough sweet softness, just enough Kira, and when she leaned in to kiss her again, Dax allowed herself to close her eyes and remember the Kira she knew.

She had tried so hard to resist, to fight the urge to think of her, to fight the urge to make this another twisted fantasy, a dream played out like a holosuite, but real, so real, so wrong. She tried to resist, but she couldn’t. It would be the end of her if she did, the end of her and the end of Jadzia; she couldn’t survive if she forced herself to think about what this really was, about who this really was — not just the Intendant, but Dax, _her_ , a Dax who should know better, a Dax who should control herself, a Dax who was not Joran. She couldn’t. She couldn’t do any of it.

And so she let herself remember. Not imagine, no, but remember. Because it was all she could do. It was all she could manage in this moment, with this woman, this beautiful Bajoran who was not Kira, this woman who looked so much like her… and with herself, her own fingers, her own wet heat, her own need and want and desire. It was all she could do, so desperate and so close and in so much pain. It was all she could do to breathe through broken lungs, to press and rub and slide with aching fingers, to arch with urgent hips, to cry out with cracked and split lips. It was all she could do.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again, face soaked through with tears and sweat and shame.

And she was. _Sorry_ as her muscles went tight against her fingers, _sorry_ as the spasms shook through her, _sorry_ as she gave the Intendant all she wanted, _sorry_ as she realised it was what she wanted too. _Sorry_ , and again, _sorry_ as the lights exploded behind her eyes, _sorry_ as the world dissolved around her, _sorry_ as cold Trill tears fell on wet Bajoran lips, shaking and silencing the screams as she came. _Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,_ because the only thing she could think of was Kira.

She closed her eyes when it was done, and didn’t open them again for a very long time.

She felt twisted and broken. She felt perverted, as bad as the Intendant, and worse. The Intendant at least had the veil of this universe to shroud her sins; what did Dax have but her own sullied conscience? She felt like a fraud, a traitor. She felt like she had betrayed Kira’s trust, like she’d betrayed Kira herself. She felt like she had betrayed their friendship, that beautiful slow-blooming thing, stripped it of everything it was and everything it could be, torn up every word they’d ever spoken to each other, every moment they’d ever shared, everything they had ever done together. She felt like she’d crossed a line, like she’d done something unspeakable and unforgivable, like she had taken something rare and precious, and twisted it into something unclean.

It was only when she felt the touch of a familiar hand, the backs of warm fingers stroking the side of her face, that she summoned the strength to open her eyes again.

The Intendant was crouched at her side, resting on her haunches, completely naked. The lust in her eyes had lit up the firestorm behind them, turning it to a great cataclysm, a torrent of heat and passion. Dax couldn’t look directly at her, afraid that she’d be burned to ashes. She wondered if Kira looked like this when she made love to Vedek Bareil. Did the world burn around her like this? Was she so brutal, so dangerous? The heat between her legs ignited again at the thought, slick and sore, and she felt sick for letting it happen.

The Intendant sighed, trailing delicate fingers along Dax’s jaw. “You do love to test me,” she said, shaking her head, like she was talking to a disobedient child. “Sometimes I think you enjoy it when I punish you.”

Dax mustered a smile, and that made her feel even worse, bile rushing up to replace the pain in her throat. “You’re very good at it,” she heard herself croak.

“It’s one of my many skills,” the Intendant said, without a trace of false modesty. “And you do bring out the best in me.”

“Thank you, Intendant.”

The hollow placation came almost as second nature; Dax felt like her guard was down, like there was nothing left in her to protect her pride, and the words spilled out of her before she had a chance to step up and stop them. The Intendant seemed pleased, though, if a little surprised, and her features softened.

“Or perhaps it’s the worst…” she mused, lost in self-involved contemplation. “What do you think?”

Dax didn’t want to think at all. It hurt to think, just as it hurt to swallow, just as it hurt to pull her hand free, stained and sticky with shame. The Intendant smiled as she did so, taking her by the wrist and raising her fingers to her mouth; Dax shivered at the sensation, the rough tongue warm against her skin. She closed her eyes again, unable to bear the sight even as it did nothing to block out the sensation, then whimpered as the Intendant flexed her other hand, the one still at her face, shifting to squeeze her jaw, harder and harder, until she opened them again.

“I asked you a question,” she said, lips shaping the words around Dax’s damp fingertips. “What do you think you bring out in me? The best or the worst?”

“I don’t know,” Dax admitted, because she had to say something, then winced at the flash of warning in the Intendant’s eyes. “The best of you is the worst of you. They’re the same thing.”

The Intendant laughed, releasing Dax’s fingers. “Such a clever answer.”

She leaned back in, and when she kissed Dax again it was with an open mouth and a tongue that tasted of sex and blood. Dax nearly choked on it, but she couldn’t push past the part of her that thrived on pain, the part that drew pleasure from her own suffering. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine that the blood came from Kira’s heart, that the sex came from the flushed frustration of awakening, that this was all just another dream, that she was in her bed on Deep Space Nine, that the tongue in her mouth was just a phantasm, the manifestation of subconscious yearnings made rich and sweet by illicit feelings.

After a long moment, sweet-sick and half-imagined, the Intendant pulled away. “You always were a clever little thing,” she murmured, almost affectionate. “Maybe that’s why I keep you around, even when you talk back to me.”

“I’m a challenge,” Dax offered, sounding hoarse and feeling nauseous. “You like a challenge, don’t you?”

“Sadly, I do.” She sighed, a low sound that was almost content. “Whatever shall I do with you?”

Dax closed her eyes again, but only for a moment. “Whatever you want,” she answered sadly, and hated the truth of the condemnation.

Of course, that was exactly what the Intendant wanted to hear, and Dax honestly couldn’t tell whether it was the words themselves that so delighted her, or the exhausted hopelessness in her voice.

“What a splendid idea,” she cooed, leaning back in. “You do still owe me a tribute, after all…”

Dax didn’t say anything as she was hauled up to her knees. She felt almost numb, worn down and worn out, like there was nothing left in her at all. She felt sordid and shaken, disgusted and dirty, the taste in her mouth threatening to make her sick even as the memory of it slicked her thighs all over again. In one moment she wanted nothing more than to crawl into a sonic shower and cleanse herself of all this, but in the next all she wanted in the world was to do it all over again. Her body ached, and so did her soul. She closed her eyes, but all she could see was a Kira Nerys who smiled like she meant it, who took her hand without taking the rest of her, who had beautiful eyes and a smile that could stop worlds, a Kira Nerys who held her not by the throat but by her heart.

Thinking of it hurt almost more than anything else, and when the Intendant took her roughly by the hair it was almost a relief to think of her instead. It was a relief, too, when she pressed her face against wet heat, commands issued roughly from a slender throat, and when she leaned in to do as she was told, it was a relief to replace the taste of her own shame with the taste of something else.

In a strange sort of way, it was peaceful. Down here, pressed against hot flesh and pulsing need, she didn’t need to look up and see that smile. She didn’t need to see her own face reflected back in eyes that looked so much like Kira’s, just as hot but burning so much darker. She didn’t need to think about who she was servicing, about what she was doing and why. She didn’t need to think of Jadzia, of herself or anything else. Curzon had been here a thousand times, and so had Emony. If she held her breath for long enough, she could imagine they were here instead, that this was just another half-lost memory of another long-dead Dax.

There was a blissful simplicity in this, the duty laid out before her. Everyone looked almost the same from this angle, and it was disarmingly easy to just focus in on the task, to do what was expected of her and close her mind to the rest. It didn’t matter that her heart was unclean and her soul was twisted and her mind was torn apart by perverse and sordid thoughts. None of it mattered at all, because when she was here, pressed between the legs of some faceless woman, listening to the discordant hum of whimpers and moans, want and lust, feeling spasms in muscles that were not hers, she could pretend that none of those things existed at all.

Even Joran was silent here, at least for now. The anger and the hate were distant memories, a half-vanished echo of something she might have once been strong enough to feel, and the blood in her veins was too thin now to feel the tug of violence. He could have taken control of her quite easily, pitiful as she was, but why would he? Her body was spent and her mind even more so; what good was she to him when she was little more than a hollow husk, a weakling on its knees? What use did Joran have for a pathetic little creature who could barely draw breath?

She didn’t have the strength to feel angry any more. She didn’t have the strength to stand up and punch the wall, or to draw the curve of a borrowed blade across her open palm, to wring out blood and bruises or broken bones, to wring out pain and use it to fortify her. She didn’t have the strength to do anything at all, anything but this, and what good was that to a sadist like Joran Belar?

For now, for the first time, she felt almost safe. Safe from him, safe from herself, safe from the terrible things that she became when she let him drive her. She felt like she could think without being overwhelmed by violence, like she could feel without wanting to kill. She felt almost like herself again, like the Dax she had been before this all began, before she learned about Joran, before she felt him stirring inside her, before she started hallucinating and hating and hurting.

It didn’t surprise her that the Intendant was loud, expressive and vocal and quite content to issue commands when she wanted something. Her voice was deeper than it had been, distorted by passion and pleasure, and Dax was thankful for that. She didn’t sound like Kira, and Dax didn’t feel like Jadzia. She felt like a tool, a sex toy with a heartbeat, something a little warmer than whatever black-market devices she kept hidden under her bed but no less expendable. It helped to think of herself that way, to separate herself from who she was and where she was and what was going on. It helped to think of this as a duty, a tribute to be paid to someone she needed a favour from.

The Intendant was not very emotive, and there was nothing sweet or gentle in this; for all the fleeting flashes of tenderness Dax had seen when she submitted, there was nothing but need in her now. This was just business, and they both knew it, and when the Intendant tightened her fingers in Dax’s hair or ground out another ragged instruction, Dax did as she was bid without words and without thought.

When she came, it was with the same calculated cruelty as she did everything else, delicate shudders contrasted sharply by loud keening cries as she tugged on Dax’s hair hard enough to tear at the scalp beneath. Dax made no complaint, of course; she didn’t even acknowledge her discomfort, simply rode it out in tandem with the Intendant as she crested the waves of her climax, teeth clenched and muscles shaking.

The fresh pain grounded her; it was simple and straightforward, everything her hands were not. The pain in her hands was a tangle, a mess of conflict and confusion, of Jadzia’s lack of restraint and Joran’s thirst for violence. The tearing in her scalp was not her doing, and that made it easy. The carpet burns on her knees, the bruises on her throat, the rattle in her chest when she tried to breathe, even the bone-deep exhaustion that shook her limbs, the aftermath of too much adrenaline… none of those were her doing, and that meant they were not her fault.

It wasn’t her weakness that closed her throat and bruised her larynx. It wasn’t her weakness that clenched fists in her hair, tugging and yanking and issuing ragged-voiced commands. It wasn’t her weakness that shoved her to her knees, pressed her mouth to slick heat, coated her tongue with sex and shame. None of that was her weakness, and none of it was her doing. It was the Intendant. All of it.

After a long moment, the Intendant dragged her to her feet. The air was thick with heavy breathing, little panting gasps from both of them, and Dax let the rhythm of it guide her movements. She went willingly as she was hauled upright, yielding as she should have yielded from the beginning, and when the Intendant plundered her mouth for the lingering taste of her sex, Dax gave that up willingly too.

“You’re such a pretty little thing,” the Intendant mused idly, speaking mostly to herself even as she let her fingers trail through Dax’s hair, as close to affectionate as she could get. “So lovely. So attentive. So… entertaining.” The double entendre was not lost on Dax, and she lowered her face to hide the blush. “It’s such a shame you insist on talking back so often.”

“That’s why you keep me around,” Dax ventured, swaying unsteadily as the Intendant shrugged into a loose-fitting robe. “You like it when I test you.”

“Oh, I do.” The Intendant chuckled, crossing back to the couch and sitting gracefully, legs spread wide so that the robe couldn’t possibly cover her modesty. Dax swallowed at the sight, and the Intendant noted the reaction with a condescending smile. “You are such a delight. So rough and aggressive, and so insatiable. It’s one of my favourite things about you, you know.”

From what little she’d learned about Jadzia, Dax wasn’t exactly surprised. “I could say the same about you,” she said evenly. “If I’m insatiable, it’s just because I’m trying to keep up.”

The Intendant laughed. “You do yourself too little credit, my dear,” she said, then frowned as Dax looked away again. “Yielding to me doesn’t come easily to you, does it?”

She shook her head, idly amused. Dax got the impression she was used to speaking to herself even when she was addressing others. Still, though, she shrugged and ventured an honest response. “No, it doesn’t.”

“I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me, really,” the Intendant went on, as though she hadn’t heard her. “After all, you couldn’t even yield to your own people. What chance does a poor Bajoran have after that?”

Dax blinked, so thrown that she was momentarily unable to cover up her surprise. “What are you—” she started, reflexively, then stopped as she remembered who she was supposed to be. Cursing inwardly, she masked the momentary slip with a growl of irritation. “You’re hardly a ‘poor’ anything,” she said instead.

“Careful,” the Intendant warned. “I’ve already taken what I wanted from you, my dear, and I’m not opposed to sending you down to Ore Processing with the Terrans if you forget your place again.”

She huffed an exaggerated sigh and brought her legs back together in what was no doubt a very deliberate gesture. Dax, recognising the demand for an apology, bowed her head.

“I’m sorry, Intendant,” she said. The words tasted like acid, like someone else’s pleasure. “I just meant…”

“Oh, I know what you meant,” the Intendant retorted, shrugging off the point and pressing on with the other, brow knitted in overblown thoughtfulness. “It really is a terrible shame, though. The Trill are such an advanced species, and yet they insist on clinging to those ridiculous traditions and taboos of theirs. I can’t say I blame you for defying them in the name of ‘true love’.” 

Dax sucked in her breath. “You—”

Misinterpreting Dax’s confusion for anger, the Intendant smiled, deadly as a snake poised to strike. “Now, now. I’m on your side, remember?” She shook her head, feigning sympathy. “Besides, who could have possibly foreseen what happened to that delightful young lady of yours… oh, what was her name?”

“Don’t,” Dax said. She had no idea what the Intendant was talking about, but she still felt choked up just the same, resistant and protective of this woman she did not know and probably never would.

“ _Kahn_ ,” the Intendant said, finishing her own monologue with an air of venomous triumph. “That was it, wasn’t it?”

Dax flinched. She recognised the name, of course; how could she forget it? Nilani Kahn had been Torias Dax’s wife, a beautiful young woman made a widow far too early by a husband who didn’t know what was best for either of them. Dax always felt a pang of anger when she thought of Torias, of the life he’d given up, the pain he’d caused and the danger he’d put the symbiont in.

She let herself think of Nilani sometimes too, when she felt particularly lonely, let herself indulge in Torias’s memories, a warm bed and a warm body beside him, of the love they shared and how deep it ran for such a tragically short time. Curzon had tried not to think about it too much, no doubt for fear of bringing out his carefully-buried sentimental side, but Jadzia enjoyed the sweetness of the memories, the innocence of it all and the flash of hope that had died too young. Jadzia was the one who let herself remember Nilani Kahn, but it was Dax who missed her.

This universe’s Jadzia, it seemed, was not content with simply remembering, and the realisation struck Dax with all the force of a physical blow. How had it happened?, she wondered. How had they crossed paths? What could possibly have possessed her to risk reassociation, to throw away everything that joined Trill held sacred? Inexplicably, she found herself feeling angry all over again, dangerous and exposed.

“Yes…” the Intendant went on, studying Dax’s face with calculated intensity. “That’s right. I remember her now. Such a terrible tragedy, what happened to the poor little thing.” She chuckled, deep and throaty, a lash against Dax’s nerves. “And _exile_. Such a permanent punishment for something that was so fleeting.”

Dax could feel the violence surging up in her again, a red haze descending over her field of vision as the rage rose up once more, so close to a loss of control. The Intendant could feel it too, she could tell, and it ignited the passion in her, that sadistic appreciation she had for bringing out rebellion only to crush it. It was easy to assume Dax’s fury was aimed at her, after all. Why should she think otherwise? Just like before, just like always, she heard and saw and imagined what she wanted, instinctively turning the focus of everything back towards herself, because who else in the great wide universe was half so important as Intendant Kira?

This time, though, she was wrong, and Dax was too angry to use that misjudgement to her advantage. It wasn’t the Intendant that she was angry with now; in fact, she’d all but forgotten that the woman was there with her at all. All of a sudden, even her own Kira’s face was a distant memory, a hazy half-remembered ghost of something that didn’t really matter. Everything was fading out, dissolving until there was nothing left but her. Dax, and Jadzia. Herself and the Jadzia of this universe, a sad and lonely Jadzia who had given up everything for nothing.

That was it, she realised. That was why she was here, why a deranged mirror-image of Benjamin Sisko had dragged her into a parallel universe, thrown her into this twisted dark place that was nothing like the world she knew. That was why she was here, losing what small shred of decency she might have still had, on her knees in front of a woman who looked so much like Kira Nerys but was so different. That was why she’d been commissioned to risk her life for a few doses of benzocyatizine. That was why Jadzia had been so adamantly opposed to going back to Trill.

Her words were true enough, she knew now. Going back really was not an option.

Dax, naive and simple as she was, had naturally assumed that it was because of the rebellion. Sisko’s little army of ragtag Terrans, the cause they were fighting for, the risk to their lives if they flew in the path of an Alliance patrol. She’d just assumed that it was the war keeping her from Trill, the conflict that made their position so precarious. That was the impression they’d given, anyway, and they’d been quick to leave out critical details. Let her draw her own conclusions, they must have thought, and of course Dax hadn’t even thought to ask questions because why would she?

She should have known better, she realised now. Nobody could shroud the truth as well as a Dax.

Exile. It was the price to be paid for reassociation, for reconnecting and reestablishing relationships with old lovers from past hosts. For most joined Trills — the ones who took their responsibilities seriously — that price was simply too high. To be exiled from Trill was to willingly be cut off from everything they held dear and precious, rending away not just their home but the future of their symbiont as well, the single most important thing to any joined Trill. When an exiled host died, so too did the symbiont, and with them all those lifetimes of wisdom and experience, extinguished for the sake of a few heartbeats. Gone forever, just because one stupid host couldn’t keep their primal passions under control. What was Jadzia thinking, to throw something so priceless away on something so fleeting?

She was angry. Furious. Here she was, trapped in a nest of vipers, in bed with the most poisonous snake of them all, wounded and alone, debased and desecrated, and all for her. All for Jadzia, the shattered-glass reflection of herself who was so far from home, so lost and so afraid, bearing alone the weight of something she couldn’t possibly understand. Dax had felt so sorry for her; she had shared her pain so deeply and so completely. She had connected with her, understood her, put herself in great danger for her… and the whole time, Jadzia had brought it on herself.

Dax had always thought she understood betrayal. She had lived a great many lifetimes, and had seen the worst side of most species. Most of the time, it was easy enough to shrug it off, to roll her eyes when a Klingon diplomat reneged on an agreement, to laugh and dismiss it when a slow-witted Ferengi cheated at tongo, to shake her head at the humans who thought they knew better. From Lela to Jadzia, every Dax host had faced its share of two-faced treachery, and she had long ago grown a thick enough skin to grin and bear even the worst of it.

But she had never been double-crossed by herself before. Jadzia was her. She knew her, she understood her. She had opened up to her, spilled out her fears and her feelings. They had connected, been intimate on a deep and profound level, connected in a way that Dax had thought wasn’t possible, and yet still Jadzia had held back the truth, the fundamental crux of why Dax was there in the first place. She had trusted her with her deepest feelings, but not with the basic facts, and that hurt more than anything else.

“My, my…” the Intendant said, still swept up in her delusions of grandeur. “Old wounds still cut deep, don’t they?”

“Don’t,” Dax said, voice sharp as she balled her fists again.

The pain was comforting, perfect patterns of blood and bruise that complemented each other in all the best ways. She could feel the danger in it, knew that she was skirting the edge of that awful violence yet again, but it was better to focus on that than the alternative, safer to indulge the masochistic pain than the rage and the betrayal. She was here now, and there was nothing she could do about that; getting angry with Jadzia would just put them both in needless danger. So what if she was in exile? It wouldn’t undo what Dax had already gone through for her, and it wouldn’t protect her from what she might yet need to.

“Was that a command?” the Intendant gasped, feigning surprise as she clapped a hand to her chest. “Have you forgotten your place, again, so soon?”

“No,” Dax said, breathing deep through her nose to control the anger. The Intendant watched her, expectant, almost excited. “I didn’t forget anything.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it.” The Intendant’s smile widened, reptilian. “Now, what were we talking about? Ah yes, your dear departed—”

“Stop it.”

She met the Intendant’s hungry gaze, willing herself not to lose control, willing herself to focus on anything but the heat and the rage, anything but Jadzia. Even the Intendant was safer than that, or so she thought; her eyes were aflame, diamond glinting and flickering behind the obsidian, and Dax reeled, momentary thrown. There would be no sanctuary there, she knew, and watched as the Intendant smiled.

“You’re trying to make me angry,” she realised out loud. “You want me to forget my place. Why?”

The Intendant laughed and spread her legs again, open and inviting. Dax saw the fresh wetness glistening there, a threat and a promise and both as dangerous as each other.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, shaking her head. “You’re delicious when you’re angry.”

“Don’t,” Dax said again, not commanding this time but pleading. The staccato throbbing in her fists was resonating in her blood now, the pulse in her veins and the red haze in her head, her own body responding to the desire she saw in the Intendant’s, so close to losing control, so painfully close… “Intendant. Please.”

The Intendant shivered at her obvious desperation; Dax wasn’t surprised in the least that she found the pleading to be as much of a turn-on as the challenge, but she tried not to think about that. She couldn’t let herself think about anything but quelling the rage, silencing the hate and the fury swelling within her, silencing Joran until she was safe and alone and could punch the wall or slide the knife through her palm or find a holosuite or… or… or _anything_. Anything to hold the anger down, anything to get herself back under control, anything to stop her from thinking of all the ways she wanted to—

“Delicious,” the Intendant purred again, cutting past Dax’s thoughts with all the precision of a blade but none of the bite that Dax needed so desperately.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, a tremulous whisper.

The Intendant laughed again. “Come now,” she cried. “We both know that’s not true.”

She slid a hand down, open-palmed, fingers trailing lazily through her evident arousal, watching Dax through half-lidded eyes. Dax bit down on the inside of her cheek, then her lip, holding her fists at her side, struggling with everything she had in her not to do the same. Her body ached, desire flaring once more between her legs, throbbing every bit as powerfully as her knuckles or her palms or the blood split from her lip. _Want_ , just as painful as blood or bruises.

“I…” she started, but she couldn’t finish.

The Intendant chuckled over a luxuriant moan. “Of course you want to hurt me,” she said, eyes flashing. “Just look at you. It’s all you can think of.”

Technically, it wasn’t true. It wasn’t the Intendant Dax wanted to hurt; it was Jadzia, cool and clever Jadzia, Jadzia who was so lonely, who had doomed them both by leading with her heart instead of her head, who even now led with her privates because it was easier. Poor Sisko, Dax thought bitterly; did he even know Jadzia was suffering alone now, suffering in isolation and exile, because she had cut herself off from anyone who could help her, anyone who could possibly understand, because she had taken the blade as surely as Dax had, and instead of cutting her hands, had slid it across her own throat. Silly little girl, didn’t she realise she had given away the only weapon she had?

Dax wanted to hurt her, not the Intendant. She wanted to take her by the shoulders, shake her until she cried for mercy. She wanted to make her see how stupid she was, how dangerous her choices, how this bed of razor-wire she slept in now was one of her own making. Part of her wanted to send her back to Trill just to watch them execute her, to watch her die for her shallow-mindedness; let her heart stop, if that was what it wanted.

But no, that wouldn’t be good enough. Joran smiled inside her head, and Dax smiled too. She didn’t just want to watch Jadzia suffer, she wanted to make it happen. She was the one who’d been wronged, wasn’t she? She was suffering for all of this. Jadzia had made her own bed, but Dax was the one who had to lie in it. Wasn’t it only fair that she eke out the punishment too? She wanted to see it done herself, to see fresh blood spill on her hands, to cut that silly little girl open, carve her up with her own damned knife, tear the symbiont out of her and give it to someone who would treat it well. She wanted to hurt her; a hundred times and in a hundred different ways, she wanted to see it done. She wanted to make Jadzia hurt.

But then, Jadzia wasn’t here. Dax would be driven crazy long before she had a chance to do any of that; the hate would consume her and drive her to far worse things than vengeance. It would take her by the throat just as surely as the Intendant had, and wring the breath out of her until there was nothing left, until she died in Jadzia’s place. Jadzia wasn’t here to suffer like she should, and Dax could not wait until she was.

“That’s right,” the Intendant said, watching the malice flicker like starlight across her face. “There’s no sense in denying it. I can see it in you. All that anger…”

“I am angry,” Dax admitted, and saying it was half the battle.

“I know you are.” The Intendant leaned forwards, breathing in Dax’s rage, thriving on it. “It’s beautiful.”

“No, it’s not,” Dax snarled, gritting out the words through clenched teeth.

“Yes, it is.”

There was a fire in the Intendant’s eyes now, nothing like the malice of before, the cold-cut diamond winking in a chasm of obsidian. All she saw now was heat, lust and desire and a grudging kind of respect, all those things that Dax had dreamed of seeing in her Kira’s eyes, wrong and right and everything in between, erotic and intoxicating. The sight did unspeakable things to her, slicking her thighs and quickening her pulse; it mingled dangerously with the fury coursing through her veins, shaped it all into something deadly, a twisted thing that she couldn’t resist, temptation and terror.

She tried to close her eyes, to strain against it, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything but feel, hate and violence and need and pain, anger and fury and rage, so many things she didn’t want to feel, so many things she did. So many, so much, and what was she supposed to do? Where was Kira now to tell her that she could rise above it? Where was Nerys to wrap her in faith?

Not here. Here, there was no Kira no Nerys, and no faith. Here, there was only the Intendant, a twisted and sordid mirror cast in diamond and obsidian, a Cardassian in all but her face. The Intendant had no interest in damming the flood, in saving Dax from herself, in helping any of them. The Intendant wanted Dax to hate, to hurt, to destroy. She wanted to watch it all, to swim in the torrent, to bask in everything that Dax tried so hard not to be. She _wanted_ … and Dax felt sick as she realised that she wanted it too.

“Come,” the Intendant purred, an invitation and a command. “Come here, and show me how angry you are.”


	11. Chapter 11

Resistance, of course, was futile.

Once she’d been given free reign to explore it, Dax couldn’t hold the rage at bay. She didn’t want to, either, she found, and it was all too easy to indulge it when she’d been given a free outlet, even encouragement. Maybe the other Kira — her Kira, the one she could barely even remember just now — would have told her to push past it, to think through the anger, to remember who she was and what she felt, but that Kira wasn’t here now and Dax couldn’t bring herself to care what she would say. Faith and good wishes from a universe away couldn’t reach her in this place, and Dax wasn’t strong enough to hear them even if they could.

The Intendant wouldn’t let her punch the walls, though, and she wouldn’t let her turn Jadzia’s knife against herself. “Such lovely hands,” she cooed when Dax drew the weapon, instinct sharpening her reflexes. “It would be such a tragedy to let them suffer any more needless damage, don’t you think?”

Dax didn’t think. She couldn’t let herself think. She was too far gone now, too deep in the thrall of rage and hate and violence, too deep in the thrall of the Intendant and the way she plucked the knife from between her fingers and held it up to the light like she was examining a priceless jewel. The sight thrilled in her veins, a heady cocktail of anger and arousal, bloodlust and carnal desire.

She wanted this. She’d always known it, but knowing it was a different thing from allowing it. Her body was an exposed nerve, raw and open, and she couldn’t separate the rage from the desire any more. The Intendant knew what she was doing, how she was feeling, and that was seductive as well; she knew, and she understood. Not like the other Kira, not like Nerys, but like Joran. She knew and she understood, and she felt the same things as Dax. For the first time, she could almost believe that feeding Joran’s violence was not something shameful.

The Intendant played her like an instrument, like Joran played his music. She knew how to keep the anger burning, and Dax was helpless to stave it off. She couldn’t even fight it when she was alone; what chance did she have in the arms of someone who knew how to manipulate her?

Besides, the Intendant was an expert. She fed off Dax’s rage just as hungrily as she fed off her desire, the tips of her fingers and the flat of her tongue, taking almost more enjoyment from the way Dax opened herself up to pain than from her whimpers of pleasure. Dax, for her part, relished the hurt as well, taking new joy from feeling it at someone else’s hand; she let the Intendant carve out shallow little channels across her ribs, free-flowing testaments to the power she had over her, the power that kept her smiling.

For the Intendant, those thin lines of blood were a brand, a mark of possession and control, her name cut into Dax’s flesh; to Dax, it was nothing more than pain, the only thing she could depend on to hold herself at bay, the only way of turning that horrible, terrible, beautiful hatred inwards… the only thing keeping her her from striking the Intendant dead.

Perhaps the Intendant did understand how dangerous she was. Perhaps she could sense the anger in her, how deep it ran and how close Dax was to a precipice that every breath threatened to push her over. Perhaps she knew that those shallow little cuts, those patterns of blood and power were the only thing keeping Dax from breaking down and destroying them both. Knowing her as Dax flattered herself she did, it was probably as much the danger that seduced her as the violence itself, the enticing certainty that one wrong step would see them both dead. No doubt she found that sort of thing alluring, but Dax did not. She was the one hovering on that edge, not the Intendant. She was the one fighting the war within herself, the little girl who couldn’t even kill a spider without tears struggling against the sadist who would kill innocent men with a smile.

The Intendant acted like there was no shame in any of this, like it was natural for a soul to hold so much fury and hatred inside, like she really did believe all that anger was something beautiful, something to encourage and not extinguish. Her blood was just as hot as Dax’s — perhaps even hotter; she was certainly wet enough for them both — and the marks left by Dax’s teeth and nails gave her nearly as much pleasure as the press of her tongue and fingers. The Intendant thrived on fury, as much as Dax depended on pain, and every time she lost control of her temper she was rewarded with a cry of ecstasy and a fresh new river of blood.

It was hours before they were both sated, the Intendant spent and sticky between her legs and Dax weak and whimpering as the last of the fury drained out of her like the blood between her ribs.

The hatred felt so distant now, the rage and the violence, the desire to hurt. She remembered it like a dream, fleeting and flickering, smoke and shadows. She remembered hating Jadzia, but she could not make sense of why. Anger was one thing, but she had wanted so much more than to simply shout at her. She had wanted to see her dead, had wanted her slaughtered, had wanted to hurt her herself. She had wanted to punish her, just as the Intendant had wanted to punish Dax, but in the wake of fresh blood and bruises, pain and pleasure and sweat-slick exhaustion, it all felt so far away. She remembered, but she couldn’t make sense of it at all.

But then, maybe that was just the nature of what Joran did to her. Irrational, nonsensical, obscene. He made her into something dangerous, someone who would see her own reflection killed in the very moment that she risked her life to protect her. What greater form of self-destruction was there?, she thought, and shuddered.

“Poor Jadzia.” 

Dax flinched at the name, cool and calloused on the Intendant’s lips. She’d felt the shiver in her, and as usual had bent its meaning to fit her ego. She held Dax’s head to her breast, stroking the sweaty tangles of her hair away from her face, and Dax had to fight with everything she was to keep from leaning into her body and letting her shield her from herself.

“Poor Jadzia…” she heard herself echo, and wondered if the Intendant would understand the pain shot through in her voice.

Of course she didn’t. Her mind, as always, was elsewhere. “All those months out there in the depths of space…” she purred, toying with Jadzia’s knife, carelessly threading the blade between her fingers. “All those lonely months with nobody around to satisfy those violent urges…” She sighed, and Dax’s cheek brushed against the point of her nipple as her breasts rose with the breath. “How you must have missed me…”

Dax thought of her Kira, the Kira who looked her in the eye and told her that one day she would be able to take all of that unwanted violence and turn it into something new, something good. She thought of the Kira who had wanted to take her to Bajor on a pilgrimage, the Kira who had wanted to tend her soul and make it pure and whole again, who had wanted to heal her and heal with her. She thought of the Kira who was her friend, the Kira who understood how it felt to think and do and want such terrible things, to feel the way she felt and hate herself for it, to hate everything she was and and still feel unable to keep from becoming that person again and again and again, unable to hold down those terrible things that defined her. She thought of that Kira — _her_ Kira — and then she looked up at the Intendant and tried to breathe.

“I did,” she whispered, the truth made into a lie. “I missed you so much.”

The Intendant, of course, heard only what she wanted to hear. She smiled, holding Dax a little more tightly, like she was something rare and precious. “I know,” she murmured. “I know you did.”

Dax closed her eyes. Her head ached, the dull pounding that usually hit after she indulged the worst of her anger, but it wasn’t the only thing that hurt. Everything did. Her hands, used and abused and ill-treated as much by the Intendant as by Dax herself, felt even worse than they had before, fingers squeezed and twisted by strong inner muscles until they were cramped and sore. The narrow rivers gouged out across her palms were not alone now, either, matched by long thin lines raked across her ribs and her back, Jadzia’s blade and the Intendant’s hand. The bruises on her knuckles had partners now too, in the blue and purple mottling that stood in stark relief against her pale wrists and the dark fingerprints branded in effigy onto her neck and the insides of her thighs. The Intendant had not been gentle, and Dax’s body throbbed all through with grounding pain.

Lying beneath her, the Intendant hummed, discordant snatches of militant-sounding songs that rang in Dax’s ear; she wondered if they were Bajoran songs, if her Kira knew them too. She shuddered as the hand in her hair drifted down, tripping over her body to rest between her legs once more, applying a little pressure for a moment and then returning to the same rhythm she’d been threading through her hair, restless idle strokes that ignited the desire but did not feed it.

Dax inhaled sharply at the sensation, but didn’t resist. She hurt there, too; the usual hum of satisfaction was overshadowed almost entirely by the revenant screams of torn flesh and forceful entry, a pain as welcome as all the rest. The dull weight of the Intendant’s hand there was almost reassuring, in its own unpleasant way, reminding Dax of all the brutality inside of her, the violence that was all her own, and the cost of indulging it.

“You must be tired,” the Intendant murmured, casually conversational.

Her hand never stilled in its ministrations, fingertips light and lazy against Dax’s centre, never stilling. Dax knew that she would take her again without a second thought if the inclination took her, and she didn’t know whether to be chilled or excited by the idea. Her heart was sickened, but her body was eager and her soul, though sated, was still hungry.

It was a moment, red-hazed and white-hot, before she realised that the Intendant was still talking to her. “You’ve come a very long way to see me, haven’t you, my dear?”

Dax had to laugh at that. “You have no idea…”

“Why is that, I wonder.” She was talking to herself again, voice low and troubled, as though she’d either forgotten Dax was there at all, or simply didn’t care. “So many months without so much as a word from you, much less a token in tribute, and suddenly you show up out of the blue. And right in the middle of a rebellion, no less.”

Her fingers turned to steel where they stroked, and Dax whimpered at the tangible threat. “Intendant…”

“Quite the unlikely coincidence, don’t you think?” the Intendant pressed, ignoring her; she allowed the tip of one finger to dip inside, just barely, and Dax clenched.

“I’ve seen far more unlikely ones,” she forced out through gritted teeth.

“I’m sure you have.” She pressed in a little deeper, just a little, smiled at Dax’s keening whine. “So tell me, then, why _are_ you here?”

“I don’t…” She trailed off, whimpering as the Intendant pulled back, resuming her restless stroking. “I…”

“Come now. Don’t be shy.” Her voice was gently wheedling, but her fingers said something else entirely. “What do you want from me?”

Dax thought about her counterpart, the Jadzia of this universe, the Jadzia who had sold her symbiont’s life for a few stolen kisses. She thought of exile, of reassociation and self-destruction, of all the things she hadn’t even bothered to think about when she’d thrown them away. She thought of hallucinations, of fits of temper and unexpected violence, of Joran’s influence but none of his memories to temper them. She thought of isoboramine, of the reason why she was here, of hosts and symbionts and two identical sets of spots. She thought of putting an end to it all, of just saying the word, _benzocyatizine_ , and being done.

But then she thought of the Intendant. She thought of anger and hate, of want and lust, pain and pleasure, desire and sex. She thought of the lean naked body stretched out and wrapped around her own, the slim sinew and long graceful limbs, the swell of a breast beneath her cheek and the heartbeat in her ears. She thought of how this woman looked so much like Kira, and how she acted like someone else entirely, the way she could make her forget Joran ever existed and then a moment later make her feel like he was the only one worth listening to. She thought of Kira, her Kira and this Kira, of faith and seduction, of a cherished friend and a perverted lover. Kira, that one and this one, both so different but still so much the same. Her Kira had so much to offer; maybe this one did too.

“You,” she breathed, lifting her hips to meet the Intendant’s strokes. “I just want you.”

The Intendant stilled her hand at that, fingers hovering, the ghost of a warning. “Is that so?” she asked, voice rising, mistrust coupled with the ego-driven need to believe.

Dax pressed her lips in a supplicant kiss to the breast pillowing her head. “Is it really so hard to believe?” she asked, tongue flicking out to catch the nipple. “You’re an intoxicating woman. Beautiful, aggressive, powerful…”

“Powerful,” the Intendant echoed, latching on to the word like a mantra. “I am, aren’t I?”

She twirled the knife again, in time with the strokes of her other hand; Dax watched, made breathless by far more than the dance of steel. Then, without warning, the curve of the blade was pressed to the underside of her jaw, sharp and threatening. Dax moaned, hips hitching.

“You would do well to remember that,” the Intendant told her, as sharp and as pointed as the knife in her hand.

Dax didn’t flinch. “I do,” she said.

The Intendant chuckled to herself, a lunatic giggling at a private joke that no-one else could ever hope to understand. She pulled the knife away, set it down on a nearby table, and let her fingertips follow the curve of Dax’s jawline, featherlight touches that contrasted starkly with the pressure still potent between her legs. Dax stifled another groan, turning her face towards the Intendant’s breast.

“Do you really want me?”

She sounded so hopeful, it stole what little remained of Dax’s breath. She kissed her fingers, one by one as they passed her lips, then covered her other hand with one of her own.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I really do.”

“Then you shall have me,” the Intendant promised.

Still, though, she hesitated, not moving even as Dax shifted her hips, pressing down with both their palms. Desperation made her bold, and courage made her reckless. “Intendant…”

“Patience, my sweet.” She pulled her hand away, let it drift aimlessly back up Dax’s body, trailing the line of spots across her side and smiling when Dax shivered, hyper-sensitive and on edge. “All in good time.”

Dax whined. “But—”

“Hush now. You kept me waiting, after all. It seems only fair that I do the same to you.”

She eased herself off the couch, climbing to her feet with a grace that made the Emony in Dax flush with jealousy. It was just a moment, though, before the rest of her surged up again, blinding white heat casting shadow on everything else, even Joran. She ached. She hurt. She _wanted_.

“Intendant…”

“No.” The word was a command. “You’ll have your fill when I’m ready. Not before. Remember where you are, my dear, and who I am.”

Dax squirmed, frustrated and urgent. “What do I do until then?”

“Whatever you want,” the Intendant replied with a shrug. “But might I suggest you get some rest?” She smiled, flashing her teeth. “Replenish that infamous Trill stamina of yours.”

“I have plenty of that,” Dax insisted, a pleading whine. “I—”

“I’m sure you do,” the Intendant interrupted huskily. “But you’re going to need a lot more before I’m through with you.”

*

_The chains were heavy around her neck._

_She knelt, back stiff and knees sore, breath coming in ragged gasps. What better place for a prisoner than on her knees? Of that, at least, she approved._

_Her neck wasn’t the only part of her held by chains, though they were heaviest there. Her arms ached, bound fast to the wall above her head, sharp metal digging into the delicate skin of her wrists. They would leave a mark, she thought, and let out a half-crazed laugh. She was beaten, brutalised, broken, and yet she was worried about a little mark? It was as hilarious as it was tragic._

_She was stripped bare, naked and flayed, reduced to nothing but blood and bones, completely exposed. That was fair, she supposed; it was nothing less than she deserved for what she’d done, and when she bowed her head for what felt like the millionth time, it was in confession as much as submission. She had done terrible things, and now she awaited her penance, eyes and body laid open._

_“Don’t let her fool you.”_

_The voice was her own, but just barely. It was colder, harsher, the unrepentant savagery of one who had learned too many times the price of being soft. Jadzia, she remembered, feeling the cold air pass through the hole in her chest._

_She tried to raise her head, to look up and face the woman who had done this to her, but she didn’t have the strength. All she could do was stare down at the wet stone floor, and when she grew tired of that hateful sight, drag her eyes up over the battered contours of her body, bruises obscuring the spots on her legs and blood slick and hot between her thighs, old scars on her belly and new shallow cuts across her sides, up and up until she found the gaping chasm torn out between her ribs, the empty void where her heart used to be._

_Penance, it seemed, was easier to come by than death._

_“She’s not to be trusted,” Jadzia said, a low warning._

_“But she’s such a pretty thing.” Familiar hands, slender and graceful, cupping her chin and guiding her head up, supporting her where she could not support herself. She tried to focus, but her vision was blurred and misty with tears and sweat; she recognised that voice, too, but couldn’t quite place it. “Are you sure she’s dangerous?”_

_“Oh, she’s dangerous.” She could just about see her now, the hazy red outline of silly little Jadzia shaking her head in disgust. “She would have killed me, if I’d let her. She would have cut out my heart and eaten it.” She laughed, cold and cruel. “She thinks she’s a Klingon.”_

_“That’s ridiculous. She’s about as Klingon as a Terran mole-rat.”_

_Jadzia laughed. “Let her have her delusions. They won’t do her any good where she’s going.”_

_“So did she?” There was curiosity in the voice, all tangled up in hope. “Cut out your heart?”_

_“Almost.” Jadzia’s smile was like ice, sharp and as bright as her eyes. “But I was too quick for her. I got hers first.” She bared her teeth, white stained by fresh blood._

_Dax opened her mouth to speak, but Jadzia was too quick for her here as well. She lashed out, sharp and sudden, and Dax was too dazed to realise what was happening until the stars starting spinning past her field of vision, head snapping ruthlessly back, connecting with the wall and dizzying her even more. She was reeling too much to tell whether the blow came from a fist or a foot, or even from something else entirely, but she supposed it didn’t matter. A blow was a blow, and the pain was the same no matter where it came from. Dimly, she remembered that she liked pain, that pain was good. Pain, pleasure, penance…_

_Ironic that this pain came from Jadzia, she supposed. But then, of course, she was used to that breed of irony by now, self-inflicted suffering taken to a sordid new level. If she’d had any use of her throat, she would have laughed until the tears choked her._

_But then, what good was laughter here, or tears? She had been stripped of more than just her clothes and half of her skin; she had been stripped of her dignity, her identity, everything that made her what she was. Everything but her name, and that was the one thing she didn’t want. It was a miracle they had let her keep the symbiont in her belly, though a part of her suspected they’d only shown her that small mercy because they were afraid she would die if they removed it. And death was far too tender a mercy for a creature like her._

_“She made me everything I am,” Jadzia said, and Dax blinked back the blurry confusion and tried to focus on her again. It was easy to focus on Jadzia because she knew what she was supposed to look like; she knew the sight of her own face, even in reflection, and she recognised the sinister smile just as surely as if it were her own. “If you like what you see…” Another blow, a rock-solid fist tearing through the hole in her chest, laced with a pang of something that felt like bitterness. “…I promise you, I’m ten times the woman she is. You should forget her. Take me instead.”_

_Dax tried to protest, but she still couldn’t speak. She felt like her throat had been ripped out along with her chest, but she couldn’t look down to see it. Above her, Jadzia was pulling the other figure towards her, and as their lips met in a torrid kiss, she recognised the silhouette of Kira Nerys._

_Of course it was Kira. She shook her head, delirious. Who else would it be? Who else would call her pretty when she looked like this? Who else would kneel in front of her her and touch her face so tenderly after everything she’d done? Who else would believe that she wasn’t so terrible, even when she was heartless and throatless and soulless, even with all the evidence in front of her? Nobody. Just Kira. Only Nerys._

_But then, which Kira? The Kira she knew, or the Kira she didn’t? The Kira who had faith in her to overcome this thing that she’d become, or the Kira who encouraged her to embrace it? Or was it both? Surely that was it; surely it was both._

_Now that she could see again, she realised that, yes, there were two silhouettes, two familiarly alien shapes wrapped around Jadzia’s tall body. Of course it was both of them. After all, what was Kira without Nerys, and what was Nerys without Kira?_

_She watched. It was all she could do, chained to the wall and turned inside out; it wasn’t much, but it was something, and in a place like this, something was everything. They had cut out her heart, torn out her throat, bound her hands and her neck, chained her to the wall like an animal waiting to be slaughtered, but they hadn’t taken her eyes, her vision. They hadn’t denied her the right to sight, and the sight of herself — another Jadzia, a better Jadzia — tangled up with two versions of Kira, kissing and touching and tangled up in gasps and whispers of passion, was almost more than she could bear. Hunger sharpened her teeth, but there was nothing she could do feed it; they may not have taken her eyes, but they had taken everything else. They had chained her up like a dog, helpless to their whims, and all she could do was watch and slaver._

_“It’s sad,” one of the Kiras murmured; her eyes were warm as they looked down at Dax, warm and bright and beautiful. Nerys, she thought, and almost wept. “It’s not her fault she’s like this.”_

_Jadzia rolled her eyes. “She’s a killer,” she hissed._

_“So am I,” the other Kira said, then gestured back at the first one, licking her lips. “And so is she. We’re all killers here. What makes that one so different?” She smiled, but there was a threat behind the expression, and her eyes were not nearly as pitying as the first Kira’s. “Is it because she looks like you?”_

_“She is me,” Jadzia corrected. “She doesn’t just look like me. We’re not sisters, we’re the same.” She lashed out again, and Dax tasted blood. “But she’s not as strong as me. She let him own her. Whatever has been done to her, she brought it on herself. She should have known better. She should have been stronger.” She looked at the first Kira, the pitying one. “She killed you too, you know. She took what she wanted from you, and then she killed you.”_

_The first Kira looked at Dax, head cocked to the side. “Did you?”_

_Dax wanted to speak, but she still couldn’t. Her lip was split, bleeding where Jadzia had struck her, and she spat blood and saliva as she nodded. Kira’s expression shifted, sorrow touched by disappointment, and Dax turned her face away, bowing her head and staring down at the wet stone, grey turned red and dark. It hurt less, watching her blood pool at her feet, than seeing the betrayal in Kira’s eyes._

_She expected another blow, though she wasn’t sure who from, but it never came. Instead, she felt those same delicate fingertips curl under her jaw, brutally tender, tilting her face up just as they had before. Tears pricked behind her eyes, guilt turned salty with shame, and she tried to look away but Kira held her tight. She was good at that, Dax remembered, and choked on nostalgia. The warmth in her eyes was painful, cutting deeper than a blade, deeper even than the chains at her wrists; Dax supposed this was another kind of penance, another kind of punishment, force-fed forgiveness that she did not deserve. She opened her mouth, and a guttural little whimper escaped her._

_“…sorry…”_

_“Don’t let her fool you,” Jadzia said again. Then, at last, came the blow she’d been expecting, a boot to her stomach, and Dax wondered if the symbiont felt it as she doubled over as best she could while still in chains. “She’s done far worse things than that.” Another ruthless kick, and Dax spewed blood and bile and broken apologies. “Haven’t you?”_

_“Yes,” she choked, once and twice and a thousand times. “Yes, yes, yes.”_

_“I don’t believe you,” the first Kira mused, pressing a chaste kiss to the bruises on Dax’s cheek. “I don’t believe she’s as dangerous as you want us to believe.”_

_Beside her, the other one laughed. “She’s too delicious to be dangerous,” she volunteered, leaning in to examine her. “Have you tasted those delectable spots?”_

_Jadzia growled, a low warning that was aimed far more at Dax than at the two Kiras. “She’d kill you both in a heartbeat if you let her loose,” she reminded them._

_“Would you?” The second Kira sounded almost excited by the idea. “Would you kill us both? Cut out our hearts? Eat them right in front of us?”_

_Dax turned her face away, but she could not hide from the truth by hiding her eyes, and her body jerked and twitched in its bonds as she struggled to keep from nodding her condemnation. Jadzia laughed, shaking her head, and wrapped one arm around each of the two Kiras. There was a heat in her eyes, too, but it was not warm at all; it was dark and vicious, the curved edge of a blade sinking deep into the chasm of Dax’s chest. She was dangerous too, Dax knew, but the two Kiras didn’t seem to care about that._

_Why didn’t they care? She wanted to scream with the unfairness of it. Jadzia had done this to her, after all. Jadzia had torn her inside-out and chained her up for all the world to see; Jadzia had torn her chest open, ripped out her heart and eaten it. Jadzia had done to her all the things she’d done to Kira, and yet she was walking about and bragging about it, laughing and rolling her eyes, calling it justice. Jadzia had made her this terrible thing, this pitiful creature; Jadzia had leashed her and chained her, made her a beast, a wild animal clawing and struggling against its restrains, a monster on display for all to see and flinch back from when it roared. She had made Dax what she was just as surely as Dax had shaped the little girl Jadzia had once been into the bloodthirsty killer she was now. Why didn’t anyone care about that?_

_The injustice burned like rage, and she tugged at the chains binding her wrists. A howl escaped her, rending its way free from deep inside her, and some fractured corner of her mind supposed that she must still have her throat after all if she could use it to make such an awful sound. She struggled, roaring and rattling her chains, loud and chaotic and violent, at least until what little strength she had withered and died, the howls guttering out into pitiful keening whimpers. She was frustrated, slick with so much more than blood, angry and aching, desperate. She wanted to kill, to maim, to destroy, to become completely the terrible thing that Jadzia had made her. She hungered; the chasm in her chest was ravenous, and it needed to be fed._

_“I think we should let her loose,” said the first Kira, and Dax almost sobbed at the sympathy alight behind her eyes. “She’ll never redeem herself chained up like that.”_

_“Who needs redemption?” the other Kira laughed, smile full of poison. “I just want to have fun with her.”_

_“You trust too easily,” Jadzia muttered bitterly. “Both of you.”_

_Dax had to agree with that, but of course she couldn’t say so. Even if she could form words, how could she say it? How could she tell them that Jadzia was right? How could she tell them that she was every bit as dangerous as she said, and more besides? How could she look them in the eyes — Kira’s eyes, reflected twice — and beg them to keep her chained and broken, locked up tight where she was safe and couldn’t hurt anybody? How could she look at Kira, at her faithful Nerys, and tell her that all she wanted was to break free and feast on blood?_

_She couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. So she didn’t. She just kept her mouth shut, watching and waiting with wide eyes and hopeless whimpers as they clustered around her and debated her fate._

_Kira, the warm one, was crouching in front of her now, expression open and hopeful as she looked into her eyes. Dax shuddered at the contact of her fingertips, still so brutally tender against her face, fighting the urge to take them into her mouth, to bite down and feed. She closed her eyes, tried to block it all out, but even blind she could see the burned-in image of two Kiras wrapped around one Jadzia Dax, three bodies with three voices, saying three very different things. She wanted to end all three of them, but she wanted to end herself most of all._

_When she opened her eyes again, she was surrounded on all sides._

_Kira in front of her, warm and hopeful, fingertips trembling against the side of her face, so desperate to believe that there was still some shred of good in this pathetic little thing huddled before her. Kira beside her as well, standing above them both, hands on her hips, features cold and calculating, like Dax was nothing more than a toy, a plaything, a game to be played; she wanted to test her, to see how hard she could push before Dax pushed back and tore her to pieces. The idea excited her, Dax could tell, and felt an echoing thrill in her own blood._

_But then there was Jadzia. Silly little Jadzia. Jadzia, who had been so confused, so worthless and small. Jadzia, the hopeless little girl that Dax had taken in and educated, who had learned how to be terrible too. Dax had taught her and trained her and turned her into something new, and now she stood over her, ready to see her burn for that. Jadzia, who hadn’t even been able to hold her own thoughts in her head just a short while ago ago, and now she held the key to Dax’s life in her hands. The injustice of it made Dax growl and hiss again, straining against the chains, biting down on her lip to keep from biting Kira’s fingers._

_“She’s heartless,” Jadzia pointed out, and gestured to that endless canyon in her chest. “You can see that for yourself.”_

_“I don’t think so.” Kira, of course. The first one. The real one. Nerys, Nerys, Nerys. “I think she just needs to find a little faith.”_

_Dax tilted her face, leaning into her touches; it had been so long since she had felt anything kind or gentle, so long since she had known anything other than violence and hate. It had been so long since she’d been touched like this, and longer still since she’d wanted to be. She’d all but forgotten what it was like, how sweet and safe it felt to be cared for, to inspire such faith in someone so faithful. Kira’s touch was so gentle, so soft and light, and the contact sent tiny ripples of sensation all through Dax’s skin, awareness of how much pain she was in, how raw she felt, how badly she ached. She whimpered again, on the edge of a sob, and Kira let the tips of her fingers linger at the corners of her parched lips._

_“Let her loose,” she urged, breathy and reverent, and Dax saw tears shining in those warm eyes. “By the Prophets, let her loose.”_

_The other Kira giggled her agreement, clapping her hands with childish glee at the thought of a shiny new gift all ready to be unwrapped. “You heard her,” she cried, hands wandering down to grip Jadzia by the hips, sharp teeth nibbling the line of spots at the side of her throat, wanton and wanting. “Let the pretty little thing loose. We’ll have so much fun with her, you’ll see.”_

_Jadzia sighed. “She’ll kill you,” she warned. “She did it before, and she’ll do it again. If I let her loose, she’ll kill you.”_

_“She can try,” the second Kira replied, and slid her tongue into Jadzia’s mouth._

_Jadzia sighed, but did as she was told, pulling away with obvious reluctance to crouch down in front of her huddled victim. “You don’t deserve them,” she said, and Dax knew that she was right. “You don’t deserve either of them.”_

_Dax hissed her agreement, then sucked in her breath, the blood in her veins igniting as the chains loosened. She wondered, with the tiny fraction of sanity that was still hers, how there could be a pulse inside of her when there was no heart to drive it, how the blood could be so hot in her veins when there was nothing in her chest to regulate it. But then, what did she care about pulses or hearts that were already long gone? What did she care about her own blood when all she wanted was to drain theirs? She could taste the promise of freedom, sweet as a sugar cube on her tongue, so close but still so elusive, like the memory of something sweet and delicious, of eagerness and anticipation, of—_

_“There.”_

_The chains were off, thrown aside to a long-abandoned corner, and Dax peered up at the Kira who was holding out her hand._

_“Nerys…”_

_For a long moment, that was all she could process, the name and the face that held it, beautiful Bajoran eyes that blinked and crinkled at the corners. Nerys, her Nerys, alight with faith in her like she always was, and for a time Dax could only stare and squint and blink in confusion, unable to make sense of her smile, a smile that didn’t promise violence._

_She had been chained for so long, locked up in the prison of her own guilt and shame, heartless and hollowed out, bleeding and broken, trapped inside the hurt she’d inflicted and the chasm in her chest growing ever wider for every moment that the horror didn’t horrify her. She had been chained for so long, trapped and bound, that she almost couldn’t remember what came next._

_Then it all came rushing back to her, and she bolted upright, teeth bared and senses suddenly hyper-alert. Of course. How could she have forgotten the best part?_

_She smiled. Disarming, unnerving, but with just enough sincerity that Kira leaned in a bit closer, expectant. Eager. Stupid. Her eyes were so bright, her smile so soft. How dare she be so beautiful? How dare she be so open, so honest? How dare she have so much faith?_

_“Thank you,” Dax murmured, because she remembered that was what came next, gratitude and supplication, all the things they’d expect._

_“You’re welcome.” Kira leaned in, close enough that Dax could press her face to the crook of her neck, inhale the scent of her, of warmth and sweat and Bajor._

_The scent ignited her senses, and the rest came as second nature. She pounced, as fast as lightning, and before any of them knew what was happening Kira was on her back and Dax was on top of her, blade sharp and shining in her hand, blood welling up between her fingers, honing the hunger. She didn’t waste time wondering where the knife had come from or how she’d got hold of it. What did that matter now? The only thing she cared about was using it, and that part she remembered all too well._

_Kira didn’t have time to cry out. The curve of the blade dug in deep, serrations catching tight as Dax carved a jagged track across her throat, rough and ragged just like she was, just like Jadzia; there would be no clean cuts here, and no quick death, oh no. Dax relished the sight, the savage brutality, the blood thick and dark and red and not her own, enjoying the way it slid off the surface of the blade, that breathtaking blade, with its perfect curves and its sharp serrations. It was so much more beautiful than any Bajoran._

_She could hear the other Kira gasp, fear mixed with just a hint of excitement, thrilled by this in spite of herself, and the angry “I told you so!” from Jadzia, desperate footfalls as she ran for her life. She could hear everything, suddenly hyper-aware of all her senses, but the only one she cared about was the one making her mouth water, the scent of blood filling her nostrils and the taste rich and raw on her tongue._

_“Why?” Kira managed, a sickening gurgle that lodged in what was left of her throat._

_Dax shrugged. Wasn’t it obvious?_

_“You gave me no choice,” she said, and lowered her head to feed._

*

She woke to the sound of her own voice.

“Not again,” she was whimpering, over and over again, voice muffled and lost to the press of warm flesh. “Not again, not again, not again.”

It took her a moment to come back to herself, to blink away the cobwebs of mnemonic hunger and piece together where she was. Terok Nor, or Deep Space Nine, curled up in a ball on the floor. Still, even that meagre clarity wasn’t enough to stop the nonsense pleas from spilling unchecked out of her, the words like the rest of her, trembling and shivering, as frightened and helpless as a child woken from a terrible nightmare.

She wasn’t alone. The body surrounding her was small and strong, and the arms wrapped around her were as achingly familiar as the voice that whispered soothing words in her ear.

“Kira,” she realised aloud, then sobbed with desperate relief as the last vestiges of the dream faded, bringing into bold relief the presence of the woman next to her, lithe and lean, all sinew and grace “Kira, oh, Kira…”

But no, that wasn’t right, was it? She knew the truth, even as it took her brain a moment or two to catch up with her reflexes. It wasn’t Kira, at least not beyond the surface. It wasn’t the Kira she wanted, her Nerys, and she realised the mistake a fraction of a second too late.

Those achingly familiar arms went stiff around her, rigid and unrepentant as chains, and Dax stifled another sob as she remembered the cut of metal against her neck and wrists, the bonds holding her down, keeping her safe from herself. Was she chained here, too? Was she locked up in the arms of this Kira who wasn’t hers? Her head ached as she tried to process it, thick and muddled, and she realised that she’d been crying.

“I told you.” Kira’s voice — no, the Intendant’s voice — was low and lethal. “Do _not_ call me that.”

“I’m sorry.” Dax tried to sit up, but the Intendant tightened her grip, holding her down, hips and back pressed against the floor. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I was… I was dreaming…”

“I know you were.” Her voice was cold, but her arms softened just a little, and when she pressed her mouth against the shell of Dax’s ear, it was to whisper not to bite, quick flicks of her tongue where she had expected the sting of teeth. “Were you dreaming about me? Were you imagining all the sordid things I might let you do to me?”

“No.” Dax swallowed, sickened by the taste of truth, as rich as blood but harder to digest. “I dreamed I killed you.”

This time, it was the Intendant who sat up, delicate eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline. Her expression flickered, like she couldn’t decide whether to be angry or impressed. “That’s a very dangerous thing to admit,” she said after a moment, quiet and deadly. “I have a rebellion on my hands, you know. I can’t be too careful. I could have you executed for insurgent thoughts.”

“It’s not like that,” Dax insisted shakily. “I didn’t want… I mean… I don’t…”

She shook her head, not sure how to put it into words; to her relief, the Intendant seemed to understand, chuckling softly and pressing a condescending kiss to her cheek. “I know,” she soothed. “You’d never really try to overthrow me, would you?”

“I have no reason to,” Dax said, realising only after she’d said it that she’d probably cut a little too close to the real truth of it.

“Of course you don’t,” the Intendant agreed. “Who else would let you warm their bed like I do? Who else would indulge that delightful little temper of yours? Overthrow me, and you’d deprive yourself of the one person in all the galaxy who understands you.”

That cut close to home as well, and Dax hated how much of a struggle it was to try and steady herself. She should be used to it by now, she thought bitterly, both the dreams and the Intendant. She was sick and sordid, everything Dax hated, but she did understand. She knew violence, but far more important, she knew what it was to thrive on it, to crave it. She knew how it felt to be excited, aroused, enthralled by the idea of pain. She understood what Dax was feeling, the quickening of her pulse every time she slid the knife across her palm, the heat between her thighs when the Intendant marked her. She understood the deepest, darkest, most unforgivable parts of her. Not even Nerys understood that.

As for the dream itself… well, that just left her frustrated and angry with herself. There was no excuse for letting it affect her so profoundly, not after she’d had so many of them. They happened all the time now, every time she closed her eyes, every time she tried to clear her mind; sleep was synonymous with dreams now, and she should have expected it.

It wasn’t the dreams themselves that so unsettled her, though. It was the fear that followed, the child-like terror, the sweating and the shivering, and the fact that it only happened after she woke up. Where was that fear when she needed it? Where was the horror when she was ripping Kira’s throat open? Where was the sick taste in her mouth, the bile and the nausea, when she was actually eating her heart? Where was the fear when she was staring into the face of the thing she had become?

Inside the dreams, they didn’t feel like nightmares at all. They didn’t feel like horrors or terrors or anything of the sort. She remembered the bad dreams she’d endured night after night after she was first joined, the latent fears of seven lifetimes manifest in the only way they could, again and again when she let her guard down and let her subconscious rule. Those were proper nightmares, the kind that left her bathed in sweat and hoarse-voiced from screaming, the kind that still sent chills down her spine just to think of them. They were the kind of nightmares she could handle, because her mind had let her be afraid of them.

These weren’t like that. It was only when she woke that she found herself wanting to scream, and even then only for the moment or two before she came back to herself and remembered who she was. It was only for those few fleeting seconds, the groggy confusion of wakefulness, that reality crashed down and scared her; it was only then that she reacted the way she was supposed to, curled up on the floor, clinging to whatever meagre shred of self-identity she could find, feeling like a child faced with something awful. It was only for those fractured moments that she realised how terrible the dreams truly were, and how awful her deeds were inside of them, and even that realisation faded away before she could grasp it.

While she lived them, she felt exactly what her dream-self felt, the primal pleasure and the sweet sadism that filled her heart and her head, the sheer ruthless joy of slaughter and violence. She felt it as she lived it, and as she lived it, she relished it completely.

Waking from those dreams was torture in itself, feeling those lingering traces of satisfaction ebbing away, drowning as the shame and horror flooded in to replace it as she came back to herself, then feeling it dissolve as the world around her took form once more. It was bad enough to know that she was capable of even imagining such things, that her mind could process such dark and twisted desires at all, much less to actually enjoy herself when it did. Dax had always been a firm believer in the separate line between fantasy and reality, the healthy space for enjoying things recreationally that she would never even conceive of putting into practice in the real world. But this was different. This wasn’t a harmless fantasy, and even if it had been it was so far outside Dax’s comfort zone that such a thing in itself would be frightening enough.

Even that wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst part, the truly sickening part, was that she knew — deeply and fundamentally, she _knew_ — that these twisted dreams were so much more than the simple manifestation of latent perversions. There was nothing of her in the dreams; in them, she became Joran Belar as truly as he had become Joran Dax. It wasn’t a fantasy, but a fundamental truth, something deep within her, not simply an outlet for her feelings, but something she was truly capable of. The monster she became when she slept was not just some conjured phantasm, a dream-stalking demon trying to prey on her fears and validate her courage; it was a reflection of herself, of who she was, no different to the countless times she dreamed of Curzon’s lovers or Emony’s victories. The violence was in her now, just as they were, and it would be there for good; the dreams were just reminders.

Beside her, the Intendant tilted her face upwards, meeting her lips in a fleeting kiss that might have almost been sweet if she were anyone else. “So tell me,” she murmured, lips as warm as her body. “What could I possibly have done to make you want to kill me?”

“I don’t want to kill you,” Dax said again, and she realised as she said it that she was far more desperate to convince herself than she was to convince the Intendant, who seemed to think of this whole thing as some kind of joke. “I really don’t. It’s just… well, it’s been been such a long time since I had you in my bed…” 

The Intendant laughed. “You’re the one in _my_ bed,” she corrected. “Well, you’re on my floor, anyway. And you’re here at my leisure, lest you forget yourself again.”

“I won’t.” The promise was an empty one. “Intendant.”

Humming to herself, the Intendant let her hand drop from Dax’s jaw, cupping her neck and looking into her eyes; she looked thoughtful, but also suspicious. “What goes on inside that pretty head of yours, I wonder…” she mused. “You’re always such a mystery, my dear. You keep your cards so close to your chest. Now, don’t misunderstand me, it’s a delightful chest, and I do so enjoy its many splendours… but it can get rather tiring to try and read you when you close yourself off like this.” She shook her head. “And that temper of yours…” 

Dax sighed. It felt strange, hearing those words from the Intendant’s tongue, so similar to what her Kira — her _Nerys_ — always said, the way she got so frustrated and impatient when Dax refused to talk about whatever was on her mind in a given moment. Nerys was always so free with her thoughts, if not her loyalty; she spoke her mind, whether it was invited or not, and she expected the same from her friends. Apparently the same was true of the Intendant, but that didn’t make it any easier for Dax to be what either of them wanted.

The truth was, she simply wasn’t wired that way; it was painful enough to admit weakness inside her own head, much less to say it out loud. Curzon had been better at it, she knew, and Torias had been a veritable expert, but she wasn’t either of them, or any of the others. She was Jadzia Dax, and most of the time it was all she could do to keep from drowning in self-loathing at that very fact; even after three years, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she didn’t deserve the symbiont inside of her, that it was worth more than she was, and that she was stunting its growth. She was unworthy, and if that wasn’t a good enough reason to keep her feelings bottled up inside, she didn’t know what was.

Maybe one day Nerys would understand that. From the look on her face, the Intendant would not, so Dax didn’t bother trying to explain it. She just sighed again, massaged her temples, and said, “I’m sorry, Intendant.”

Placated, at least for now, the Intendant squeezed her jaw. “I don’t know what to do with you, sometimes. I really don’t.”

That was much easier to deal with, and Dax summoned a mischievous grin. “I have a few suggestions,” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” the Intendant replied with another hearty laugh. “And perhaps, if you’re lucky, I’ll let you put a few of them into practice.”

Dax nodded, bowing her head with just the perfect amount of submission. “At your leisure, Intendant,” she said.

“Yes, you are.” The Intendant kissed her again, this time with approval, and Dax was nauseated to realise that she actually felt gratified by it. “But before we get onto more pleasurable matters, why don’t you tell me all about this dream of yours…”

“Why?” Dax blurted out before she could stop herself.

The Intendant’s eyes flashed. “Does it matter why?” she demanded. “Perhaps I’m bored. Perhaps I like a good story. Perhaps it should be reason enough that I asked you to do something.”

Dax closed her eyes, feeling her jaw tremble as she fought to swallow down the lingering taste of self-loathing. She knew what the Intendant was really asking — _‘tell me about all your dreams, tell me your darkest desires, tell me your most twisted fantasies, your most sordid imaginings, tell me all the terrible things you secretly want’_ — but it was more than she could bear to even think of doing her bidding this time. It was more than she could bear to admit even just inside her head that any part of her might want the things she dreamed about, much less that that part grew bigger with each one.

“I can’t,” she whispered aloud, and though there was regret in the words, there was no apology.

The Intendant chuckled again. There was a richness to the sound, a familiar luxuriance, but it felt heavier than usual, weighted down with something Dax hadn’t heard from her before. It wasn’t quite sympathy but it wasn’t her usual seductive malice either; it was something else entirely, and Dax’s ribs contracted with sudden brutality as she recognised it. It sounded like Kira, like the real Kira, like Nerys. It sounded not like empathy but like understanding, and Dax felt a pang of pain squeeze around her heart so tight that she could barely breathe.

She felt her jaw clench and tremble. She couldn’t bear to see Kira’s face looking back at her right now, couldn’t bear to see those eyes she knew so well burning with something that she didn’t recognise, couldn’t bear to let herself hear the understanding in her voice and imagine it meant something else. She couldn’t bear to see her, to hear her, to be with her at all. She couldn’t bear it, and she tried to turn away, but this was the Intendant’s world and the Intendant wouldn’t let her. She gripped her by the jaw once more, holding her in place and forcing her to meet those strange-burning eyes, to look deep into them and see that she was and was not Kira.

“Why not?” she asked, and there was that understanding, that weighted depth, all those things Dax couldn’t bear. “Angry, passionate, beautiful Jadzia. My sweet, stubborn Trill. What are you so afraid of?”

Dax buried her face in the crook of her neck, frightened and ashamed, wishing she could believe that this twisted woman really was Kira, wishing she could take some comfort in the words that tore themselves free from her throat, from the words that defined her, the truth that left her shaking and scared after dreams of things that didn’t scare her at all. With everything she had in her, she wished that somehow, some way, the Kira she knew was listening and could hear her.

“Me,” she confessed, lost and lonely. “I’m afraid of me.”


	12. Chapter 12

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Dax bared her teeth, let them scrape lightly across the Intendant’s collarbone, and smiled when she shivered. She hated how easy it was, how quickly she fell into the abyss, how little resistance she put up when those terrible things rose up to claim her, how readily and deliberately the Intendant brought them out in her. Was it any wonder she was dancing so close to the edge, she thought, when the one person who had faith in her had suddenly become the one pushing her closer?

“You don’t understand,” she said, willing her hands to stay steady as she wrung them in her lap. “This isn’t one of your kinky sex games.”

She closed her eyes, struggling to ignore the heat that sparked unwittingly in her groin; she was suddenly acutely aware of the bruises on her wrists, her thighs, her throat, of the cuts and scratches along her ribs, of the dried blood on her hands, of the countless brands of violence painting nearly every inch of her skin a different colour… and even more aware of how good they felt.

“That’s a pity,” the Intendant said, seeming to feel the heat rising in her. “It would make a glorious one, don’t you think? You and me and those delicious dark dreams of yours…”

“Don’t.” Dax hated that the idea didn’t make her feel nauseous. “It’s not a game, and it’s not a joke. It’s… _I’m_ dangerous.”

The Intendant swung to her feet, restless and impatient, throwing her hands up in disgust and leaving Dax exposed and naked on an unfamiliar floor. “Poor sweet Jadzia,” she murmured, shaking her head as she crossed the room to retrieve her robe. “You have such delusions of grandeur, don’t you? Do you really think you’re the only soul on this station who’s ‘dangerous’? Do you really think you’re the only living creature who has a temper?” She laughed, shrugging into the robe with her trademark grace. “I’m far more dangerous than you could ever be, my dear, even in your dreams.”

Dax shook her head. “You don’t…”

“Yes, I do.” Her voice was hard, stoic and solid in all the places her Kira’s would be soft and tender. “I’m more dangerous than you can imagine, my poor deluded Trill, and you don’t see me whimpering about it.” Her eyes flashed, though whether in promise or warning, Dax could not say. “Quite the contrary, in fact.”

Dax swallowed hard, forcing herself to take a few deeps breath, to remember where she was and who she was talking to, to remember that the Intendant really was as dangerous as she said she was. It was a different kind of danger, of course, but it was certainly real enough, and Dax had no doubt that she had every intention of making good on her threats to send her off to work with the Terran slaves if she kept forgetting her place. She needed to remember why she was here, who she was supposed to be.

 _Jadzia,_ she thought, grounding herself, and bit a little more blood from her lip.

“I’m sorry,” she said out loud. “You’re right. I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t dangerous. I know you are, and I know what you’re capable of. I do. It’s just… I was out there for so long, alone… and I…”

“Yes, yes.” The Intendant waved a dismissive hand. “I know. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in such delectable company as mine.” She smiled again, taking a moment to admire herself in a full-length mirror on the other side of the room. “I can’t say I blame you, I suppose. I intimidate myself sometimes too.” She turned back to Dax, hunger radiating out from every inch of her. “And you are so utterly adorable when you get flustered and short-tempered like that…”

She shook her head, rearranging the robe about her shoulders so that it fell open to expose the swell of her breasts. Dax’s mouth went dry, but she refused to whimper. “Thank you, Intendant.”

The Intendant laughed again, stepping closer. “Honestly, my dear, when you look at me that way, sometimes I think I’d forgive you almost anything.”

That was comforting, though Dax had enough sense left not to say so out loud. She just said, “You’re too kind to me,” and gazed shyly down at the carpet.

“I know I am,” the Intendant breezed. “It’s a particular fault of mine, you see… I’m too kind. Too generous. I allowed too many liberties to those ungrateful Terrans… and, well, you can see how they repaid me.” She sighed, heavy and exaggerated. “You’d never think of doing what they did, I know, but it still wounds me to think of that traitor Benjamin Sisko and his little friends making a mockery of me.”

Dax cut a quick glance at her, and was startled to see the sincerity in her eyes. She truly did believe what she was saying, that the rebellion had come about because she’d been too accommodating to her former slaves, because she’d treated them too well. Dax recognised the fire in her eyes, the intensity and the passion; she’d seen it in her Kira more times than she could count. Righteousness. Righteousness and indignation, the hurt of someone who had offered kindness and been betrayed. It made her feel ill.

Oblivious to her discomfort, the Intendant pressed on. “You see, my dear, there’s nothing to fear in taking a firm hand when necessary. I know it must seem loathsome to a sweet little thing like you… but believe me, you’ll regret it far more if you don’t.”

Dax wanted to point out that cold-blooded slaughter was rather a huge step up from ‘taking a firm hand’, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Truth be told, she was somewhat afraid of what she would see if she held the difference up for inspection. Dax already felt dirty and twisted just by being here at all, by letting the Intendant manipulate and seduce her, by letting her coax out the anger and the heat and the want, by letting her blur the lines between pleasure and pain, wrong and right, forcing her to question everything she knew and everything she was. She already felt twisted and sordid; realising just how dangerous the Intendant truly was would only make it worse, and Dax didn’t have the strength to deal with that just yet.

The Intendant, of course, was still talking, happily content to bask in the sound of her own voice. “If I hadn’t been so weak-willed, I wouldn’t have a rebellion on my hands now.” She sounded so weary, so long-suffering; had she been anyone else, Dax would have almost felt sorry for her. “I wouldn’t have Benjamin Sisko slinking around and hiding in those damned Badlands, safely out of our sensors’ reach, laughing at me while he and his little band of traitors plan their next assault. I wouldn’t have to worry about any of that, if I’d just shown a little less mercy… if I’d just been a little less kind.”

Dax didn’t know what to say. She thought of the rebels she’d met, of Sisko and Jadzia, holed up in some backwater corner of the Badlands, lying low and biding their time, isolated and hidden away. She thought of how lonely Jadzia had seemed, how cut off from anyone who could understand what she was going through, cut off from the galaxy she’d once explored so freely. It was one thing being exiled from Trill, Dax knew, but another thing entirely to be forced into hiding. From what little she’d inferred during her time here, Jadzia wasn’t the kind to stay in one place for too long; she was far too much of a mercenary to enjoy a life of sitting still, of biding her time and waiting for the action to come to her. She needed to be out in the depths of space, not holed up with a bunch of people she didn’t care about and couldn’t trust even when she thought she was going insane.

Dax’s cover story was one that made sense for this universe’s Jadzia; a few months of self-imposed isolation, wandering the far reaches of the galaxy in search of adventure and excitement. Even solitude was more appealing than cowering and crawling in some backwards corner of the galaxy, to any incarnation of the Dax symbiont. Dax herself had faith enough in Jadzia’s moral compass to believe that she was at least somewhat invested, if not in the rebellion itself, at least in Sisko, no matter how much she argued to the contrary, but that didn’t stop her heart from aching to think of the freedom she’d so grudgingly given up to be a part of his little traitor’s band.

It unnerved her, sitting here next to the very person her other self was fighting against, looking at her face and listening to her side of the story, seeing the betrayal reshape her features as she wondered what she might have done differently. _‘Old wounds cut deep’_ ; wasn’t that what the Intendant herself had said, speaking so coldly about Jadzia’s exile from Trill? It seemed that the words were just as relevant to her as well. Regret was a painful thing; Dax knew that all too well, and it stung far deeper than she expected to watch the echoes of it shadowing Kira’s eyes, even if this was a Kira who deserved every ounce of it.

“You did the best you could,” she mustered at last, and hoped that the words would satisfy in lieu of any real sympathy.

They did, apparently. “I know,” the Intendant said with a weary sigh. “I know. I did what was necessary, what was expected of me. I did everything I could under trying circumstances. Nobody knows that better than I do.” Her face lit up, lips curved into a half-smile. “But you see, my sweet Jadzia, that’s precisely why a temper as spectacular as yours shouldn’t be allowed to go to waste. You have the most delicious violence inside you. Why are you so reluctant to accept it for the gift it is?” Her voice was rising with her passion, like Kira’s sometimes did. “Don’t sit around waiting for some cold-hearted traitor to stab you in the back with your own misplaced compassion. Your temper is a beautiful thing, my dear. You should cherish it. Harness it. Use it.”

She crossed to the bed, sitting down on the edge and playing idly with the corner of the sheet, head tilted in a wordless invitation for Dax to join her. Not wanting to antagonise her further, Dax did as she was bid, standing on shaky legs and crossing the short distance to sit down at her side. She tried to keep a little distance between them, but the Intendant was relentless, closing the space as if it were nothing, and dropping her head down onto Dax’s shoulder, uninvited.

“And what would I use it for?” Dax asked, sullen. “I’m not like you. I don’t have a whole station full of Terran slaves to keep down at heel.”

The word ‘slaves’ tasted bitter on her tongue, unpleasant, but she forced herself to say it, forced herself to swallow that taste, to commit it to memory and know that she was still capable of feeling bad about it.

“No, I suppose you don’t,” the Intendant conceded after a moment; she raised her head, studying Dax with a strange kind of sobriety, a seriousness that seemed strange on her. “But you could have.”

“What do you mean?” Dax asked. She suspected she already knew the answer, and it turned her stomach.

“Do you really think I can trust that idiot Garak?” She laughed, a little too loudly, just skirting madness. “He’s tried to have me killed more times than I can count. And whatever high hopes I might’ve once held for Benjamin Sisko… well, you know as well as I do how that turned out.” She heaved another sigh, and it was by pure instinct that Dax ducked her head to kiss the exposed ridge of her collarbone. “No. There are vipers and demons everywhere, I’m afraid. I’m surrounded on all sides by people who want my job or my head… or both, in Garak’s case. The more power you have, I’m afraid, the more knives are pointed at your back.” She allowed herself a brief moment of seemingly genuine affection, trailing her fingers through Dax’s hair and brushing her lips over her cheek. “At least you keep yours where I can see it.”

Dax took a steadying breath, tried not to think of that knife and where she wanted to put it. “Intendant, I…”

“Yes, yes. I know all your excuses. You love your precious ship too much. You don’t like being tied to one place for too long. You’re afraid of having your heart broken again, assuming you ever had one to begin with. I’ve heard them all a thousand times.” She exhaled, a sorrowful little sound that made Dax’s chest go tight. “I suppose I’d just rather hoped that this latest jaunt of yours might have left you tired of all that pointless travelling. You’ll have to settle down some time, my poor homesick Jadzia. Why not at my side?”

Feeling suddenly self-conscious, Dax wrapped the sheet around herself; if she was honest, it was far more to cover the cuts and bruises than it was to protect her modesty, but the Intendant barked a laugh at the sight all the same. Dax tried not to think too hard, tried not to wonder what she must look like, how vulnerable, blue and purple and red, a mosaic of pain and hurt. Did Jadzia let the Intendant do this to her, or was this new for them both? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“It’s a lot to think about,” she said guardedly, occupying her hands with the sheet to keep from fumbling for Jadzia’s knife.

“I’m sure it is,” the Intendant agreed. “Take all the time you want to think about it. I know how you Trills enjoy your thinking.” Her smile turned predatory. “Besides… I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep me busy while I wait for your answer.”

Dax tried to hide her grimace. Her body pulsed temptingly at the obvious overtones, as eager now as it ever was, but the rest of her was still too raw to even think of it. Part of her just wanted to sleep, but she knew all too well where that would take her, and the exhaustion bled into the discomfort until all that was left was an overwhelming need to hide.

She couldn’t hide, though. She couldn’t hide, and she couldn’t sleep; all she could do was sit there and wait for the Intendant to be done with her, to wait until she’d exhausted herself as thoroughly as she’d already exhausted Dax. Briefly, she thought about just lying back and letting the Intendant take her anyway, to do whatever it took if only she’d occupy her mouth with something other than talking. She was tired and in pain, but she could spread her legs easily enough, and there was always room for a little more hurt in a soul as dark as hers.

It was tempting, yes, but ultimately pointless; in the end, she’d just be prolonging the inevitable. She could only put off the truth for so long, and the longer she pushed it aside, the harder it would be when she finally needed to confront it. She was here for a reason, and pleasing the Intendant a hundred times, or even a thousand, wasn’t going to get her any closer to what she needed. 

She took a deep, steadying breath. The Intendant, characteristically misinterpreting, let her hand slide under the folds of the sheet, warm against Dax’s skin. Dax swallowed, felt her body tense, but did not try to push her away. Let her do what she wanted, she thought; it would be harder for her to lose her temper if she was otherwise occupied.

“Actually…” she heard herself mumbling, voice pitchy and tremulous as the Intendant worked her way up her thigh. “…actually, there is something you could do for me.”

The Intendant stiffened at that, fingers turning to steel where they caressed, and expression turning instantly to something angry and wounded. “You do want something from me,” she said flatly; it was an observation, not a question. “That’s why you’re here.”

“I…”

Dax felt like she was on the edge of a precipice, a rocky cliff face with the ground crumbling to dust beneath her feet. A single step in any direction could make the situation worse, but standing still would surely see her thrown over the edge; she had to say exactly the right thing, play her hand exactly the right way, or she would lose in an instant any chance she might have at getting what she needed— no, what Jadzia needed.

“Tell me,” the Intendant snarled, pulling her hand back and raising it to Dax’s face, the threat of a slap. “And tell me the truth.”

“I didn’t say that,” Dax managed after a moment’s deliberation, praying she’d called this right. “I could get what I want myself, and I will if you don’t help me.” It wasn’t true, and she had only her experience at the tongo table to convince the Intendant that her hand was a good one. “But you’re asking a lot from me, and I would consider it a… personal favour… if you’d make things a little easier for me while I think it over.”

The Intendant stared at her, eyes narrowed, as though trying to figure out whether or not to believe her. That it was even a debate in her mind at all was in itself pretty astonishing, and Dax had to fight with everything she had in her to keep from rolling her eyes. Apparently, Jadzia’s tales of the Intendant’s narcissism weren’t the least bit exaggerated; the woman would probably believe that the depths of space were full of breathable air if it was said in a sufficiently supplicant tone.

“All right,” she said at last, confirming that theory, though the calculating edge to her voice told Dax to tread with caution. “Tell me what you want. If I have a mind to help, I will. But if I do help…” She smiled, cool and sinister, and so unlike Kira that Dax almost forgot they shared a face. “If I do, then I expect you to repay me in kind. I expect you to tell me all about that delicious violence inside of you… all your dark dreams, all your sordid desires, all those secret little things that make you so afraid of yourself. All the perverse corners of your heart that nobody else will ever understand.” She leaned in, teeth sharp against Dax’s split lip. “No details spared. If I give you what you want, you give me what I want. And I want _everything_.”

Dax’s mouth went dry. Her mind raced, a blur of Joran, his hate and his fury and his anger, all the hours she’d spent locked up safely inside the holosuites on Deep Space Nine, hiding and making sure that the only people she hurt were made of refracted light and replicated matter, that nobody else would suffer at his hands — her hands — _their_ hands. She remembered the dreams, all of them and all at once, the sweet taste of flesh in her mouth, the bloodlust and the rage, the fleeting fear when she awoke, supplanted almost instantly by the memory of heat and hunger and want.

The Intendant hummed against her mouth, and Dax thought of last night’s sex too, of the way this vicious shadow of Kira had relished the violence in her, taken advantage of her bloodlust and masochism, the way that Dax herself had embraced the pain, the simplicity and the sweetness as the Intendant cut into her with Jadzia’s knife. She remembered the way she’d begged for more, whimpering into the Intendant’s mouth, keening pleas lost to the back of her throat. She thought of all the things she was so afraid of becoming, all the things she’d become already, and she knew that the Intendant would nurture those things in her, that she would feed them until they grew too big to ignore, too big to resist, too big to fight.

It was too much, she thought, terrified. The price was too high.

But then, inevitably, she thought of Jadzia. Not the twisted creature she’d warped in her dream, or the traitor she’d hated so briefly when she’d learned about her exile. She thought of the real one, the one who was lost and afraid, alone even as she surrounded herself with friends and lovers and whoever else. The Jadzia who could never go home, who had put her sanity and her life into the hands of a stranger who bore her face and made hollow claims to understand how she felt. The Jadzia who still didn’t know who Joran was, who would have to learn the hard way if she wanted to survive him. The Jadzia who had given her the blade, that deadly serrated blade, those jagged edges that could slit a throat or a palm. The Jadzia who had hated so much to drop her own responsibilities onto someone else’s shoulders, who wanted nothing more than to be herself again. _Jadzia…_

Dax had crossed universes for that Jadzia. She had gone against her Starfleet training, against Kira’s advice, even against her own better judgement, and all because she couldn’t allow another Dax to fall prey to Joran’s influence. She had already debased herself with this tyrannical narcissist, so what was one more dirty deed? Even if she lost herself here, even if the Intendant drowned her in Joran and his violence, wouldn’t it be enough to know that another Jadzia might be spared?

She didn’t know. How could anyone know for sure if something was worth that? Maybe she would never know. But even if it wasn’t, she still had to try.

“Benzocyatizine,” she said, spitting the word out as quickly as she could, before she had a chance to reconsider and second-guess herself. “I need benzocyatizine. From Trill. As much as you can get.”

For a long moment, the Intendant simply looked at her, mild puzzlement undercutting her usual calculated scrutiny, as though she couldn’t quite make sense of what she was hearing. Dax wondered if she had any idea what she was being asked, if she knew what benzocyatizine was or what it was used for. It would be easy enough to find out, if she was really curious, but she wouldn’t put it past someone of the Intendant’s interrogative prowess to test her by feigning ignorance even if she did know. Not that it really mattered if she did or not; Dax didn’t care what she thought about the request, so long as she did something about it. 

“I see,” the Intendant mused after a short beat. “And how, exactly, do you plan on getting it if I don’t help you? From what I know of your countrymen, reputation is everything, and I don’t imagine there are many respectable Trills out there who would be willing to put their precious reputation on the line to send out medical supplies to known exiles.” Dax recoiled at the slight, hissing not because she found it particularly offensive, but because she knew it was expected of her, and the Intendant rewarded her with another sly smile. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter, does it? Even if you do have some other source hidden away somewhere, you’d never reveal it to me, would you? You’re far too clever for that…” She shook her head, playfully disappointed and grudgingly proud. “More’s the pity.”

Dax bit her tongue to keep from forgetting her place again, or at least from losing track of the role she was meant to be playing. She repositioned herself awkwardly on the bed, shifting uncomfortably, if only to give her body something to do. She didn’t say anything, painfully aware of the Intendant’s hawk-like stare; one wrong move could change her mind, for good or for ill, and if she thought for even just a second that she really was Dax’s only hope (and she would know it beyond all doubt if she just had the sense to look a little closer and see the tremors in her hands), then she would raise the stakes even higher than they already were. Dax could not afford that, and so she bit her lip and held her tongue, did everything she could to keep her body active, to keep those telltale tremors from becoming too obvious, holding herself in check and waiting for the Intendant to make the decision by herself.

She did eventually, albeit with obvious reluctance, and Dax was desperately trying to mask her relief almost before she got the words out.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she muttered at last, expression hard. “But understand that I’m not making any promises. You know how flighty those Trills can be.”

Dax definitely did know that, though she had the sense not to say so. She just bowed her head again, because that was the mark of supplication the Intendant seemed to like best.

“Thank you,” she breathed, then forced her voice to lower to a sultry purr, not too far from the kind that the Intendant herself used so often and so freely. “Like I said, I could get what I need myself. But if you were able to acquire it for me… well, then I’d owe you, wouldn’t I?”

“You would indeed.”

Though she said it standoffishly, the gleam in her eyes was obvious, and Dax could tell that she was counting the opportunities. There was a good deal of Ferengi business sense in her, she thought, in addition to the obvious militant resolve that marked her as Bajoran and that unsettling edge of Cardassian ruthlessness. She hoped she wouldn’t have to stick around long enough to find out if she could add ‘Klingon’ to that list too; an unexpected sense of honour would be the last thing she needed.

“It’ll probably take a while,” the Intendant went on, clearly aware of how desperately Dax wanted to be free from this place. “Days, at least, and that’s assuming your friendly neighbourhood Trills are even the least bit cooperative. I hope you weren’t planning on leaving any time soon…”

The challenge was obvious, and Dax forced down the disappointment with a considerable force of will. She’d known better than to expect things to be simple, really, and it would have been nothing short of stupid to assume that she would be safely on her way back to the Badlands in a few short hours, but she’d hoped for a speedy turnover just the same.

She didn’t want to stay here, not with creatures like the Intendant circling and sniffing her, just looking for fresh weaknesses to expose. Every minute she stayed was a minute she risked blowing her cover, and she wasn’t the only one who would be in trouble if that happened; Sisko and his rebellion would be at risk too, to say nothing of Jadzia. It was a lot to carry on her shoulders, and Dax was exhausted just thinking of the countless things that could go wrong.

But, of course, she couldn’t let the Intendant see any of that. She would notice in a second, sense the reticence in her, and know that she had an ulterior motive. It was one thing to want to move on, Dax knew, but another thing entirely to want to move on quickly, and she didn’t trust herself to harness the tact needed to keep from arousing suspicion. The Intendant was watching her, keen-eyed and intent, like she knew she’d catch a glimpse of something if she stared for long enough, and Dax had no intention of making it that easy for her.

So, making use of all those late-night tongo games, she set her face and shrugged, rolling her shoulders like she had all the time in the world. “I’ve only just arrived,” she said out loud, silently relieved by how steady her voice sounded. “Why would I want to leave?”

“Good answer.” The Intendant rumbled her approval, low and deep. “I couldn’t bear to lose you again so soon.”

That was a lie, Dax knew; she’d spent enough time with Ferengi hustlers to recognise false praise and shameless flattery. The Intendant knew how to get what she wanted, and she wasn’t ashamed to do whatever it took; in this case, what she wanted was Dax’s compliance. Oh, she had no doubt that she really did want her to stay in sight and in reach, and she flattered herself that she really did want her in her bed too, but she suspected that was more a question of convenience than anything else; she knew better than to think the Intendant truly cherished her talents in that department, at least no more than anyone else’s. She just wanted Dax, like everyone who crossed her path, under her thumb.

Dax willed herself to get back to business, to think and talk like a mercenary, like someone who was used to long layovers in places like this, who was used to getting her hands dirty with people like the Intendant for days or weeks at a time without so much as a second thought, someone who could just take a sonic shower and wash away the illicit deeds.

“I’ll need quarters,” she said, clipped and sober.

The Intendant burst out laughing. “I wouldn’t dream of it!” she cried, as though she couldn’t imagine a worse insult to either of them. “No, no, no. You’ll stay here with me. I want you close.”

That was very dangerous, and Dax couldn’t quite keep the alarm from touching her features. “You wouldn’t want me to get underfoot,” she managed.

“Oh, don’t I?” She laughed again, colder this time, and more calculating. “My sweet, innocent Jadzia… if there’s one thing you must have learned about me by now, it’s that ‘underfoot’ is exactly where I want you.”

Dax winced. She didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “Intendant…” she floundered, feeling her freedom slipping away and knowing she was utterly helpless to stop it. “Intendant, I really don’t think…”

“No, you don’t.” The Intendant ran her fingertips along her jawline, up to her temple, tracing the pattern of spots as they faded out and disappeared towards her brow. “You’ve never been one for thinking, my dear. That’s one of the many, many reasons why I like you.”

There really wasn’t much Dax could say to argue with that, and so she didn’t try. She just winced again, feigning tiredness, and sank back against the cool sheets. The pillow was warm beneath her head, and her body ached as she stretched out, the pleasant pain counterbalanced by the red haze in her head.

Dax had never been one to turn away from a shared bed if it was offered, but sharing quarters was a different thing entirely; she enjoyed her privacy, the peace and the tranquillity of solitude, and the security of having a quiet place where nobody could see her doubts or her fears. She was a social butterfly by nature, and she could happily waste her nights with Quark and his Ferengi friends, playing tongo and drinking, but once she was home, she was alone, and she liked it that way.

Being a joined Trill naturally meant being introspective. With seven lifetimes — no, _eight_ lifetimes — of experience and countless memories rattling around inside her head, it was crucial to find some time to switch off and filter through them all, to wade through the depths of seven dead hosts and embrace the one who still lived. It had taken a very long time for Dax to strike the perfect balance, to enjoy all the gifts that Curzon and the others had to offer while also taking the time to indulge the young woman who had taken them inside herself, to cast off the warmth and comfort of their wisdom and become that silly little girl again. She knew it was just as important to focus in on herself and tune out the others, to remember who she was and how she had become this complex amalgamation of thoughts and feelings; without self-awareness, all those memories would be little more than a jumble, chaotic and discordant, and she’d lose herself completely.

Peace and quiet were fundamental for that. Dax needed time and quiet to think, to reflect and remember, and she had learned that it simply didn’t happen when she was in the company of others; it was too easy to hide behind Curzon’s charisma or Torias’s confidence, to smile like Audrid or talk like Lela, to wrap herself up in their habits and their voices, to become all the things that she alone could never truly be. It was easy to be Dax, but it was only when she was alone that she could force herself to remember the silly little girl that was Jadzia.

It had become even harder since Joran. He wasn’t like Curzon or the others; he didn’t understand the importance of letting the host retreat into their own memories once in a while. At the very least, he didn’t understand what it meant to respect each of a symbiont’s hosts equally. Joran wanted what was best for himself: his needs, his desires, his violence. He had no time for Lela’s patience or Emony’s ambition or Curzon’s exuberance, not when there was pain to inflict and suffering to enjoy. Since he had resurfaced inside her, Dax hadn’t been able to shut him up. Even when she was focusing inward, trying to connect with herself — with Jadzia — he refused to be quieted. She hadn’t been able to silence his sordid feelings, his dangerous thoughts, the violence or the anger inside of him; they’d become parts of Jadzia too, or at least it felt that way, because even when she was completely alone (especially when she was completely alone), all she could feel was Joran.

Curzon and the others understood the fundamental need for quiet and solitude, and knew when to retreat, but Joran never did. He stayed, even when they were silent, and that left her with nothing to fight him with. She was alone, without their influence, just a frightened little girl and the crazed psychopath that insisted he was a part of her. That was why she’d spent so much time in the holosuite, hiding behind imaginary warriors, indulging in the kind of violence that was acceptable, that did not hurt anyone. She had no choice; her quiet meditation always turned to bloodshed and pain, to violence and depravity, even when she tried to ignore it. She was weak when she was alone, and he used that against her, burrowing deeper into her identity every time she tried to connect with it. She couldn’t silence him; even alone, she couldn’t silence him. How much worse would it be now if she didn’t have that solitude? How much worse when she was in constant company with someone who thought and felt and behaved so much like him?

The thought was so frightening, so overwhelming, that she almost completely forgot the added risk of blowing her cover if she stayed in close quarters with the Intendant. It was a concern, yes, but next to the weight of Joran’s influence it was a pretty minor one, and there was only room in her head for one paralysing fear at a time. Ultimately, the Intendant either would or would not see through her; there wasn’t much she could do about that except hope she had the poker face to pull it off. But if Dax couldn’t find a place to be alone with her thoughts, it didn’t matter either way. If she couldn’t find a place to be alone and deal with his influence without indulging it any more than she had to, exposing the rebels would be the least of her problems.

The Intendant was so much like Joran, and she had the same way of seducing Dax as well, of bringing out the things that he coaxed in her, of encouraging the terrible feelings that weren’t hers at all. The last thing in the world Dax needed was to spend every waking moment in company with a woman like that, the aggressive and forceful woman who saw a playmate in her, who thought bloodlust was a toy, who tugged at the places inside her where Joran lay waiting, who pretended to understand what violence was, who told her again and again to indulge it, to indulge everything, to indulge all those awful feelings…

She shook her head, fisting the sheets, and the Intendant raised a curious eyebrow.

“I’ll need some space,” Dax heard herself blurt out, the fear making her reckless.

The Intendant’s eyes narrowed; she looked almost like she wanted to laugh, but found the request too odious to actually do so.

“You’ll have it,” she said. “I still have a station to run, in case it slipped your hollow little mind. I have a horde of Terran workers under my command, and Sector Command breathing down my neck for results… not to mention insurgent would-be rebels looking to slip a knife in my back if I dare to turn it for a second.” She regarded Dax with a measure of disdain, and Dax found that she almost preferred it to the unabashed appreciation. “As tempting as it may be to while away my days in your delightful company, my dear, I do in fact have other obligations to attend to. You’ll get your precious privacy, have no fear.”

Dax flushed, trying not to think about how obvious that was, and what it said about her that she’d failed to think about it; she’d barely been here five minutes, and she was already getting sloppy. Another few days, and who was to say what state she’d be in?

“Of course,” she said, smoothing the discomfort from her features, playing the loyal servant that she knew the Intendant wanted out of her. “And you know you can call on me if you need any help keeping your workers in line.”

In truth, she said it as much for the Terrans’ own benefit as for the Intendant’s; she didn’t need Julian’s first-hand experience of the workforce in this place to know all about the harsh conditions, and she welcomed the chance, while she was here, to help keep them safe from the Intendant’s wrath.

The Intendant, somewhat perplexed, quirked a curious brow. “Aren’t you a little soft-hearted for that?” she asked.

Dax shrugged. She reached for Jadzia’s knife, gripping it by the handle this time, and running her fingertip along the tip, conscious of the Intendant’s lusty stare. “Just because I like to keep a handle on my temper doesn’t mean I don’t have other methods available to me.” She bared her teeth, leering. “I can be quite the disciplinarian, as I’m sure you know.”

“Oh, I certainly do,” the Intendant agreed readily, eyes darting from the blade to Dax’s mouth and back again.

She didn’t say anything further, neither accepting nor rejecting Dax’s offer. Her mind seemed to wander, distracted by the sight before her eyes, watching raptly as Dax toyed with the knife. Feeling exposed, Dax let the blade draw a bead of blood from her fingertip, just one, and shivered as the Intendant leaned in to taste it, lips dancing over the point of the knife.

“Intendant…” Dax breathed, shocked by how husky she sounded.

The Intendant chuckled, drawing back to look up at her. “You’re free to come and go as you please,” she said, as though the interlude had never happened; Dax could still feel the ghost of her lips, though, and it made it hard to focus on the words.

“Thank you, Intendant,” she managed.

“My generosity knows no bounds, I know. Now, you’re welcome to enjoy the facilities, though we both know you’ve never needed an invitation to do that…” She trailed off, the pause weighted with meaning, as though expecting an argument; when Dax didn’t say anything, she shrugged and pressed on. “But keep those pretty hands to yourself this time. I was willing to turn a blind eye and indulge your little indiscretions when you were coming by all the time and bringing me the spoils of your adventures, but it’s been far too long, and my cargo hold is notably empty.” Her smile turned cool. “This trip, you’re mine. Exclusively.”

It was obvious by the way she said it that the embargo was supposed to be the worst kind of insult, that she was making some kind of a point by invoking such a restriction. Honestly, from what little time she had spent with her counterpart, Dax wasn’t exactly surprised. She had her own appetites, and plenty of them, but she rather suspected that Jadzia’s would put them to shame. Clearly, this was a side of her that the Intendant was intimately acquainted with, much to her dissatisfaction.

Dax suspected it would be instant suicide not to at least acknowledge the slight, and so she scowled and huffed like it was a terrible indignity, carefully masking the fact that she’d had no intention of indulging in any more of the local fare than she already had.

“You never did take kindly to sharing,” she remarked, loading her voice with aggravation, then shrugged. “Fine. If that’s how you want it, I’ll behave myself. This time, anyway.”

The Intendant gave her shoulder a condescending pat, eyes on Jadzia’s knife. “It’s really quite adorable that you think I was giving you a choice in the matter,” she chuckled. “I was giving you a command, my sweet, not making a casual suggestion.”

Dax rolled her eyes. “Yes, Intendant. Of course, Intendant. I’m sorry, Intendant.”

“Be careful with that tone. It could get you in trouble.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Dax set the blade aside, pulled the Intendant in for a kiss. “As you know.”

The Intendant took a moment to savour the taste of her tongue, then pulled back. “I forgot how insatiable you are,” she said. “Is it really you, I wonder, or that little creature inside you?”

Dax definitely did not want to think about that. “Does it matter?” she asked.

“I suppose not.” She stretched, rising to her feet with obvious reluctance. “Unfortunately, however, your appetites will have to wait. I have a station to run.” Her eyes flashed, playful but deadly, raking over the contours of Dax’s body, the blue-and-purple mottling of blood and bruises, stopping only when they reached the wet heat between her thighs. “Now, then. No cheating while I’m away, my dear. You’re mine exclusively, if you recall, and that means you don’t get to enjoy yourself in my absence. And don’t think for a second that I won’t know if you do.”

Dax bit down on the inside of her cheek, swallowing back the rising urge to strike her, to show her that she wasn’t as in control as she thought she was. “Yes, Intendant,” she mustered instead, through gritted teeth.

“Good girl.” Dax ignored the patronising endearment. “Now, if you need me, I’ll be in Ore Processing, dealing with the ingrates.” Dax opened her mouth, but the Intendant silenced her with a dismissive wave. “Yes, all right. I’ll look into your little Trill problem as well. You have my word.”

Dax wasn’t entirely convinced that the Intendant’s word was worth anything, but it was all she had, so she took it with as much grace as she had left in her. Closing her eyes for just long enough to ground herself, she channelled what she knew of this universe’s Jadzia, handling the offer the way she thought she would.

“Thank you,” she said again, brushing her fingertips across the side of the Intendant’s hip, circling inwards. “I really… _really_ … appreciate it.”

“Yes, yes,” the Intendant muttered, but allowed her to continue her ministrations for the time being. “There will be time enough this evening for you to show me exactly how much you appreciate me. And, as we both know, I always collect on my debts.”

There was a flash of warning in her eye as she said that, the unspoken implication that she planned to collect more than just flesh this time. Dax shuddered at the sight, reminded again of just how similar this woman was to the sadomasochist inside her head; this place was just as dark and disturbed as Joran was, she decided again, and vowed once more not to stay here for a second longer than she absolutely had to.

“I know.” She pulled the back sheet around herself with her free hand, desperately hoping that her discomfort wasn’t too obvious. “I’m here to serve you.”

“Yes, you are.”

Content with that, the Intendant swatted her hand away, crossing the room to her oversized closet. She hummed thoughtfully as it slid open, a soft and melodic sound, and Dax tried not to stare too brazenly at the array of outfits that revealed themselves; they wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of Quark’s more pleasurable holosuite programs, she noted, and struggled to wipe the smile off her face before the Intendant noticed. 

She needn’t have bothered, of course; the Intendant was characteristically preoccupied by herself. She rummaged through the fallout, oblivious to everything around her, and reemerged after what seemed like a lifetime with a pair of seemingly identical outfits, one in silver and one in black. She turned to Dax, expectant, holding them up to her bosom.

“Well?” 

Dax blinked stupidly. “Well what?”

“Well, what do you _think_ , my dear?”

“What do I think of what?”

The Intendant rolled her eyes, disgusted and impatient. “Why, which one of these outfits is more likely to inspire those lazy good-for-nothing Terrans, of course! It’s so hard to find good fashion advice, and Garak wouldn’t know a commanding ensemble if one fell out of the heavens and landed on his head.”

Dax had to stifle a snort at that, thinking of the Garak she knew and how offended he would be by such a suggestion. “I’m sure he wouldn’t…” she said, biting her lip for the first time with something other than violence.

The Intendant, of course, was still occupied with her precious outfits; she looked Dax up and down as though she was still wearing Jadzia’s mercenary attire, as though she was wearing anything at all. “Now, to be perfectly blunt with you, I can’t say that ‘mercenary chic’ is really to my taste. But I can’t deny you wear the style well, and in lieu of any other opinions, I suppose yours will do. So—” She held up the outfits again. “—which do you prefer?”

Dax blinked, inexplicably wishing that her Garak was here, and not just because his reaction to all of this would be utterly hilarious. Frankly, neither outfit looked particularly intimidating, and had she been a Terran slave with thoughts of rebellion, they certainly wouldn’t have inspired her to get back to work. Well, not on processing ore, anyway; other kinds of ‘work’, maybe, but she suspected that wasn’t what the Intendant had in mind just now. She tried not to stare, cleared her throat to buy herself a little more time, and tried to think of the most tactful way to say _‘neither of them’_.

“Well?” the Intendant demanded, lacking the patience to indulge Dax’s inner fashion guru. “I don’t have all day, you know.”

Helpless, Dax shrugged. “The black. I think. Maybe. It, uh…” She floundered for a justification, as much for her own benefit as for the Intendant’s. What would Jadzia say?, she wondered, then remembered. “It brings out your eyes.”

The Intendant smiled. “It does, doesn’t it?” She tossed the other aside, preening in front of the full-length mirror. “Yes. An excellent choice, my dear. Excellent.”

She dressed quickly, eagerly, with all the excitement of a child impatient to see what she looked like in a new party dress. Dax watched without a word, feeling awkward and uncomfortable, pulling the bedsheets tightly around herself; it felt strangely intimate to sit there and stare, studying the way she moved, the way she lit up at the sight of herself, the irrepressible glee on her face as her reflection beamed back at her, the enthusiasm as she twirled, so much more for her own pleasure than for Dax’s.

It felt uncomfortable, like an invasion of privacy, and her skin felt tight and itchy. She knew that was utterly ridiculous to feel that way, to be affected at all; after everything they’d done, and with the promise of so much more yet to come, it was absurd to think that something as innocuous as this would cause any kind of discomfort in either one of them. Dax still wore the marks of what she’d let the Intendant do to her, and she wouldn’t think twice about allowing her to do it again and again and again… and yet, for the first time in a very, very long time, Dax found herself looking at Kira Nerys, and feeling illicit.

“You look lovely,” she managed when the Intendant had finished admiring herself, and turned expectantly back for another round of compliment. “You look… breathtaking, actually.”

It was true. She looked sordid, too, more like a dominatrix than the overseer of a space station, but she was still Kira, and Kira could wear anything and make it look breathtaking.

“I know I do.” The Intendant smiled down at her like a benevolent monarch. “You’re blushing, my dear.”

She was, she realised, and silently cursed herself. After everything that had happened between them, how could she not know better by now? The Intendant was not Kira; she was not Nerys. There was no reason for her to be responding that way, for the heat to be rising inside her again, for the sheets to suddenly feel tight and abrasive against her skin. She was sated; more than sated, she was exhausted. But maybe it really was the slug inside of her that was insatiable; maybe it really was Joran who wanted and ached and lusted.

But then, that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? It would be too easy to blame Joran, just as she blamed him for everything else, to pin her reactions on him. This wasn’t like the violence, though, and it wasn’t like the anger. This wasn’t the kind of feeling that frightened her, someone else’s passions twisting her own, trying to make her into something new; this was something fundamentally different. This was already in her. Oh, she could blame Joran for the way she enjoyed pain, the way she wanted to inflict it, the way she let the Intendant play with her… but the way she looked at her? The way she blushed to imagine her Nerys dressed in that outfit? The way she meant it when she said ‘breathtaking’? That was no more Joran than her love of Klingon opera.

It was her. She didn’t want to admit it, and it was hard enough at the best of times to pick apart the thoughts that were hers and the thoughts that were his. But this was simple. This was simple even back when it all began, when she was embarrassed and giddy, trying to cast out dreams and fantasies about Major Kira, when she was newly joined and clinging to the one thing she couldn’t have. It was simple then, and it was simple now, and she couldn’t deny it just because she wanted to. She couldn’t deny the heat or the blush or any of the rest of it, couldn’t pretend she wasn’t feeling it. She could only accept it, just as she had with Nerys.

The Intendant’s voice cut through her thoughts, as saccharine as ever. “Will you wait for me, dear Jadzia?”

“Of course.” The response came reflexively, and so too did the way she bowed her head.

“Good.” She was smiling, Dax knew, but there was a softness to her tone that didn’t mesh with her usual possessiveness. “My dear Jadzia. My sweet, lovely Trill. You really are mine, aren’t you?”

Dax closed her eyes, and thought of Kira. She remembered eyes that burned and a smile that wrapped itself around her heart, honesty and integrity, friendship and beauty that stole her breath. She remembered the name, _Nerys_ , the first time she’d said it, how precious it had felt. She remembered the scent of her hair, freshly washed, remembered thinking how much of a luxury it must be for someone who had spent her whole life underground. She remembered the soft fabric of her uniform, the rough callouses on her hands, the rhythm of her laugh. She remembered the runabout, too, cramped but filled with hope, whispered confessions and promises of a day when things would be better, when they would both be healed and whole again.

She thought of the Intendant, then, of slender fingers gripping a borrowed blade, of the way she’d taken it to Dax’s skin, an artist with a paintbrush, how readily Dax had played the blank canvas for her masterpiece. She thought of thin lines scored along her ribs, dark blood on pale skin, and of purple bruises further down. She thought of pain and pleasure, of blood and sweat and sex. She thought of Joran, of how he enjoyed it and how he made Dax enjoy it too. She thought of the two of them, Joran and the Intendant, of how alike they were, of how easily they broke her, taking her apart and turning her into something twisted, something that belonged to them. Joran was the Intendant’s, she supposed, just as much as Dax was Kira’s. She wondered if that made her doubly doomed.

There was no way of knowing. If she was doomed, time would make that clear enough. For now, she could only hold on to what she did know, to here and now and what little piece of herself was still her own, to who she was and what she felt. She knew that, at least. If nothing else, she knew what she felt.

“Yes,” she whispered, without hesitation. “I really am yours.”


	13. Chapter 13

She had the rest of the day to herself.

Well, for the most part, anyway. A few hours after the Intendant left, and without any forewarning, a young Cardassian showed up, waving around a primitive-looking device that could just about pass for a dermal regenerator, and Dax found herself arguing for an inordinate amount of time over whether or not her injuries really needed mending. She tried to wave the gesture away — in part because she didn’t want to be a bother, but mostly because she found the pain something of a comfort — but the twitchy young man insisted that he was there on the Intendant’s orders, and he valued his life too highly to think of disobeying her.

By his own admission, he had little in the way of actual experience. There probably wasn’t much call for it in a place like this, Dax supposed sadly; if a Terran worker got hurt badly enough to need medical attention, she supposed the Intendant would sooner just let them die and be done with it. Still, he assured her that he would do his best to repair at least some of the self-inflicted damage to her hands and the Intendant-inflicted damage to other places.

Truthfully, the last thing in the world Dax wanted was an incentive to fall back into the same hole of self-destruction. A fresh canvas of smooth pale skin to desecrate was too tempting to pass up in her present state, and given the choice she would sooner suffer the pain as it was and let that suffice than open up the same wounds all over again just because she could.

She thought about saying as much, but the poor boy seemed so genuinely frightened of what might happen if she sent him away without letting him do his duty that she felt she had no choice but to submit. No doubt that was part of the Intendant’s plan anyway, to get her all cleaned up and healthy just so that they could repeat the process again the next time she was pinned to the bed. Dax should have been outraged at the gall of it, but the young man looked anxious enough — a strange look on a Cardassian, to be sure — and she didn’t want to make his life any more difficult than it already was. So, instead, she stripped down with a grudging sigh, and let him do his job at least mostly unhindered.

It spoke volumes about her position here, she thought when he finally left her alone; she was healed, but in truth she felt worse than she had when she was broken and bleeding. She felt naked without the wounds to cover her, exposed to look down at spots and smooth skin that didn’t really feel like it belonged to her any more.

Still, for all it said about her — her worth, her so-called value in this hopeless place — it said a whole lot more about the Intendant. She hadn’t been speaking ironically, it seemed, when she’d claimed on Dax as her personal property; apparently, Dax didn’t even have the right to her own body any more. She didn’t even have the right to keep her own injuries. It didn’t matter if she wanted them healed or not; it didn’t matter what she wanted at all. The only thing that that mattered was what the Intendant wanted, and if the Intendant wanted to come back to her quarters at the end of the day and find her precious little Trill in perfect health and utterly unblemished, then that was what would happen.

She was an ornament, she realised numbly. Nothing more than a damned ornament, a decoration trussed up to match the curtains and the carpet.

It frustrated her, left her feeling impotent; she couldn’t even take the knife to her hands again, for fear that the Intendant would see the damage when she returned and take vengeance on the boy for not doing his job right. She felt like an animal, caged and stripped of its claws and teeth, but she refused to let herself feel helpless as well. She was here by her own choice, she reminded herself over and over again. She was here of her own volition. She was here because she wanted to be here, because she had chosen to come here. The Intendant hadn’t brought her here; Dax had shown up on her own. All the Intendant had done was welcome her, and they both knew knew that she wouldn’t try to stop her if she chose to leave. At least in theory, she was free.

In practice, of course, it wasn’t quite so simple. Dax had spent the best part of the last couple of weeks struggling with her own sense of identity, feeling trapped in her own mind; she felt like a puppet most of the times, like Jadzia’s body and Dax’s memories were little more than a vessel for Joran’s sordid influence. She had spent so long trying to resist the things that came as second nature in this place, and she couldn’t cast aside the feeling that being here was just reinforcing all of that, making it a thousand times harder to fight down.

The Intendant, she knew, would take Joran over Jadzia in a heartbeat. Everywhere she turned, every breath she took, there was a fresh new reason to give in, to surrender to the violence she had struggled so hard and so unsuccessfully to suppress, to yield to the darkness inside her, and she knew that it would only get worse the longer she stayed in this place. She could hardly stave off Joran when it was just him; what chance did she have of fighting off the two of them together?

She paced the Intendant’s quarters for a couple of hours, restless and edgy, like a beast searching for an outlet for too much pent-up energy. If only it was just energy she had to vent, she thought bitterly, and tried to calm her mind by counting out the steps from one side of the room to the other. Over and over, pass after pass, step step turn, step step turn, relentless, until she was so dizzy that she had to stop and sit down on the floor with her head between her knees.

After a while, in lieu of anything else to do, she forced herself to get dressed again. The movements were automatic, fingers fumbling with Jadzia’s clothing, awkward and numb. When she was done, and at least partly respectable again, she crossed to the Intendant’s full-length mirror and spent an impossibly long time studying her reflection, trying to make sense of the face that stared back at her.

It was hers, there was no doubt about that. Well, it was Jadzia’s at least, but a Jadzia who looked ill and wan, face pale and features lined with strain. She looked much older than Jadzia’s thirty years, but still so very young next to Dax’s three hundred and fifty, worn out and aged but frightened and childish. She didn’t look like herself, but she didn’t really look much like the Jadzia of this universe either. She looked like something in the middle, a strange new version of Jadzia Dax, like a shadow flitting between her world and this one. She knew the face, but she could not recognise the soul. 

It would drive her to madness, she knew, if she kept staring into the abyss like that. Not Joran’s madness, the deranged psychopathy that had plagued him all his life and had come back now to plague his successor, but a different kind of madness entirely, the kind that tapped on the edges of her mind every time she let herself stop and think about who she really was. When she looked into that mirror, she saw two Jadzias, seven Daxes, and one Joran. She saw countless memories, friends and families, loved ones and enemies; she saw Dax, an ever-expanding universe of experience and she didn’t know where she fit in all of that. The scale was so vast, so impossible, she couldn’t find herself in it at all.

The feeling frightened her, almost as much as the violence, so she dragged herself away from the mirror and crossed to the other side of the room. She picked up the knife, threaded it through her fingers like she’d seen the Intendant do, tried to lose herself into the patterns of light as they played off the blade. It worked, if only for a short while, and then she found herself suddenly having to slip the weapon back into its sheath as she caught herself thinking of how those patterns would look carved into pale skin, blood hot and wet against cold dark spots.

 _No,_ she reminded herself. _None of that. Not now._

She needed a distraction, she decided. Joran was quiet, at least by his usual standards, but his influence still lingered like it always did, itching underneath her skin and making her hands shake. She needed to do something, something more productive than pacing and staring at a reflection she didn’t recognise, something more productive than imagining a blade against her palm or bruises on her thighs.

That was how she found herself at Quark’s.

Well, the bar anyway. It was nothing like the Quark’s she knew, and calling it that made her feel hollow and anxious, nostalgia gnawing at her guts. She remembered Kira’s mission report from her time here; she had mentioned Quark only in passing, how different he was to the Quark they knew in so many ways, and how similar in so many more. She’d talked about his death too, and the nostalgia in Dax’s stomach was replaced by a sudden chill at the base of her spine as she stood there at the entrance of the place she knew and loved, with the ghost of a well-meaning Ferengi hovering over her shoulder.

The whole establishment felt different, and not just because it lacked its namesake’s insincere sincerity smiling at her from behind the bar. The ambiance was darker, duller, and though the bar was far from empty, it felt almost abandoned. It wasn’t exactly full, either, but the patrons didn’t seem especially pleased to be there. Dax could make out a few Cardassians, a group of Bajorans, even the occasional Klingon or two, but they were all all hunched moodily over their drinks, heads bowed, like they were worried that someone would haul them away if they dared to make eye-contact with anyone else.

Nobody looked happy at all; it was almost as though nobody in this wretched place dared to even imagine enjoying themselves, and Dax tried not to think too hard of how accurately it reflected what she’d seen of Terok Nor thus far. This was not the Deep Space Nine she knew and loved, and she was suddenly very grateful that her time here would not be permanent.

She swaggered up to the bar, channelling all the mercenary charm she would expect of her counterpart, and flashed the barkeep her most dazzling smile. He was a Ferengi, but not Quark or any of his less-than-reputable tongo buddies, and she didn’t immediately recognise him; possibly she did know him back in her universe — a waiter, perhaps, or a friend of Rom’s — but if she did, it was vague enough that she couldn’t place the name, and the gravel in his voice was definitely unfamiliar as he gave her a cursory glance and asked what she wanted to drink.

It was only after she’d ordered a bloodwine that she realised she didn’t have any currency to pay with. Did they even use latinum in this universe? Could she gamble away her bar tab at the tongo table like she did so often in Quark’s? Kira and Julian had conveniently neglected to mention anything like that in their reports; Dax supposed they’d had no opportunity to find out and no reason to ask. Still, that didn’t help her now, and as the bartender grunted his acknowledgement and turned away to prepare her drink, she found herself floundering desperately for a way out of this.

When he turned back, drink in hand, it was by pure instinct that Dax blurted out, “Put it on the Intendant’s tab.”

For a moment, he just stared at her as though she was completely insane. And maybe she was — at this point, she was running on pure blithe stupidity — but it was about the only thing she could think of that wouldn’t blow her cover for certain. At the very least, she could hope and pray that the Ferengi was too scared of the Intendant, like everyone else on the station seemed to be, to question the use of her name.

As luck would have it, the gamble paid off, and in the end he just huffed and turned back to the bar, muttering ominously under his breath.

“It’s your funeral…” she heard him grumble as he went. “Then again, if you’re really that desperate for a drink, maybe the grave’s the best place for you…”

She paid no mind to the words, and even less to the warning in his tone. She’d never known a Ferengi who would turn down a profit for any reason, and this one was no exception. If she had learned anything from Quark, it was that, so why should he let it bother him if Dax suffered for it? Besides, she had her drink, and for the time being that was all she cared about.

The trouble, of course, was that she was still _Dax_ , and Daxes as a rule were seldom content to settle with one drink.

Naturally, then, one turned to two, then a third and a fourth, until at last she just gave up on asking for individual drinks and told the harried Ferengi to just leave the damn bottle. By the time she remembered her promise to be waiting for the Intendant in her quarters, she was halfway down the damn thing, and by that point it was all she could do to remember how the hell to get back to the habitat ring at all.

(She did, however, remember to sneak the remainder of the bottle out with her.)

She had made the journey from Quark’s to her quarters — and even to Kira’s — a thousand times on Deep Space Nine, and in far worse states of inebriation, but this Terok Nor felt so different, so much darker and murkier, that everything felt out of place and off-balance; it would have been challenging enough to find her way back, she was sure, even if she was completely sober. As she was, drunk and confused and hopelessly lost, every step became an obstacle course, the ground swaying and wobbling precariously beneath her feet, and the corridors swerved every time she tried to squint down them.

In that state, the last thing she expected was to run into Garak again.

He didn’t seem nearly as stunned as she was when they stumbled into each other in the middle of an otherwise empty corridor; in fact, if the bemused look on his face was anything to judge by, he was rather more surprised that it hadn’t happened a dozen times already. She squinted, struggling to make out the ridges and scales of his features to try and gauge his expression, but he was even more slippery than usual and his face refused to stay still long enough for her to focus.

“Well, well, well…” he chided, derision heavy in his voice as he helped her to regain her balance and took in her condition (which, in his defence, she hadn’t really made much of an effort to hide). “I see you wasted no time. How many Klingons did you have to sleep with this time to get your bill paid off?”

Dax rolled her eyes. The corridor spun, and she glared at it. “None,” she said loftily. “Just one Bajoran.”

He actually took a step back at that, staring at her in much the same way the Ferengi bartender had, as though she’d completely lost what little remained of her mind. Dax met his gaze without flinching, expression as close to even as she could manage just then as she waited for him to stop gaping and recover himself. He did at last, but not without some effort, and the part of Dax that wasn’t second-guessing every decision she’d made since she’d docked here felt a little bit smug to see him so reduced.

“Using her name to get out of paying for your drinks?” he managed at last, practically choking on the words. “You’re even more suicidal than usual…”

Dax supposed she should have probably conceded that point, just shrugged and accepted it, then turned around and walked away. It would have been the smart thing to do, the sensible thing, and it certainly would have been the safest thing… but, of course, the intoxication had loosened her tongue and squared her shoulders, made her stubborn and aggressive. Just like it always did to Curzon, bloodwine made her bold, and boldness made her reckless.

She glared, meeting his disbelieving derision with a ferocity that told him in no uncertain terms that he had no place telling her what to do or how to behave. He was just an underling here, she reminded him with her eyes, channelling his employer as best she could; the Intendant could pull the carpet out from under him any time she chose, and he would do well to remember that.

“Why?” she demanded, a little too loudly even in the deserted corridor. “She expects a lot of me. Why shouldn’t I get something from her in return?”

“You do,” Garak reminded her acidly. “You get her mercy. Trust me when I say that should be more than enough.”

Something in the way he said it sent a chill down Dax’s spine. Though his voice held the same disarming lightness that she recognised in her universe’s Garak — plain, simple Garak the tailor — there was something razor-sharp to the way this one spoke. He wanted to do more with his voice than just disarm; he wanted to riposte.

The Garak of Deep Space Nine liked to challenge his companions, to keep them on their toes, alert and aware, awake to the possibility that nothing was ever exactly what it seemed to be; he was potentially dangerous, yes, but in his manner at least he was strictly playful. This Garak, the Garak of Terok Nor, was completely different, and though he spoke with the same amicability that the other Garak used so well, he had sharpened it to a point, and there was nothing playful in it now. Where the other Garak was mostly content to spar with blunted tips or wooden swords, this one used every word as a keen blade wielded with the intent to cut.

Dax didn’t want him to see how much he’d unsettled her, though, and so she straightened her back and fixed him with a cool, careless look. “What I get from the Intendant is none of your business,” she informed him flatly. “And it’s not your place to tell me what is and is not ‘enough’.”

He quirked a brow. “No,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I suppose it’s not.” Though his tone was just as even as Dax’s, he was starting to look a little guarded, like a rat sensing a trap, and as he spoke his expression turned cold, making him seem even more reptilian than usual. “We both know she’ll do what she wants anyway. And far be it from me to deprive her of another new chew toy…”

Dax rolled her eyes again, then reeled as the corridor repaid her with another sickening lurch. Garak huffed a weary-sounding sigh, and reached out to help steady her again. She tried to hiss at him for that, to tell him that he was stepping beyond his rank — not out of any genuine offence, but because it felt like something Jadzia would do if she was ever stupid enough to be caught in this condition — but it was almost more than she could do just to muster a scowl.

So, instead, she settled for shoving him roughly away; naturally, without his support, she wobbled, unsteady and dizzy, and she was sure that she could feel the station spinning slowly beneath her feet. It made her queasy, and she would have doubled over if she wasn’t so damn stubborn, but at least when she swayed and lurched and groaned, she was doing it under her own power and not his.

“I suppose you need some help getting back to your quarters?” Garak grumbled, sounding overburdened and irritable.

Dax tried to glare, but she imagined it probably looked more like a headache-induced squint. “No,” she said sullenly, then promptly gave up the pathetic feint at self-support and fell back against the bulkhead. “I need some help getting back to her quarters.”

Garak sighed again and rolled his eyes. “Of course you do…”

Still, for all his hot air and aggression, he was chivalrous enough as he escorted her through the twisting corridors, and his hands were surprisingly gentle as they helped her to stay upright. Dax had no doubt that his uncharacteristic thoughtfulness was the product of fear more than compassion, that he was just afraid of what the Intendant would do to him if he let her precious property get damaged without her permission (or at least without her active participation, Dax thought, and choked on a bitter laugh), but she didn’t particularly care. If she was going to be trapped under the Intendant’s heel for as long as she was here, the least she could do was benefit a little from being in bed with the boss.

They stopped outside the now-familiar door, the Alliance emblem bright and garish against the standard-issue surface, and Garak paused to give her a dubious once-over before letting her go.

“I assume you’ll remember where it is this time?” he said, and though his tone was light and airy there was a sobriety behind his eyes that set off a warning klaxon in Dax’s head.

“I’m sure I will,” she replied, trying to keep her voice steady. “I appreciate the help.”

He didn’t say anything straight away, but he made no move to leave, either, and she could tell by the look on his face that he was thinking very deeply, debating whether or not he could get away with pushing her a little more. Dax’s head swam as she stared back at him, trying to give him a taste of his own medicine, to unsettle him as thoroughly as he was unsettling her with those piercing eyes and those silly Cardassian neck ridges of his.

Naturally, she didn’t have much effect on him. A drunk Trill wasn’t especially intimidating at the best of times, and she supposed that squaring off against a Cardassian only made her look even more preposterous. Still, though, when he opened his mouth to speak a few moments later all the feigned lightness was gone from his tone.

“You might want to think about getting back on that ship of yours sooner rather than later,” he remarked, the words dripping malice. For a moment, Dax wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but then he leaned in close, lowering his voice to a whisper, and there was no mistaking the implication in what came next. “I’m sure you’re positively _dying_ to get back to where you came from…”

Dax felt her blood run cold, but refused to rise to the bait. “What are you talking about?” she demanded hotly, floundering for some measure of self-control.

He couldn’t mean what she thought he meant, could he? He couldn’t know. She was a little drunk and she was hearing things that weren’t there. She was imagining insight where there was only an antagonistic Cardassian trying to make her uncomfortable. The Garak she knew might have sight beyond sight when it came to weeding out people’s secrets, but there was no reason to assume this one was the same. Surely he didn’t… surely he hadn’t…

“Come now.” He snorted, a grating and nasty sound. “You can’t possibly believe you’re fooling anyone with this little charade of yours.”

…of course he had.

Panic gripped Dax by the throat; she struggled to think, but the fog around her brain was heavier than the urgency of the moment, and she silently cursed the bloodwine swimming inside her. When she tried to challenge him again, to insist that she didn’t know what he was talking about, to pretend that he was the one who had it all wrong, all she managed was a sickly-sounding, “You’ll have to be more specific…”

“Do you really want me to say it?” he shot back, folding his arms and leaning coolly against the nearest bulkhead. “Here, out in the open? Walls have ears, you know.” 

That was a valid point, and Dax loathed him for it. Still, she had to know. She had to know what he knew. Did he know that Jadzia was part of Sisko’s little rebellion? Did he know that she wasn’t her? Could he possibly know both? No, that was impossible; not even the Garak of Deep Space Nine was that perceptive, and who the hell was this low-life little minion anyway? He couldn’t even assassinate his own Intendant! He couldn’t possibly have the resources or the insight to see through either of her disguises, much less both.

“They’re not the only ones, apparently,” she muttered, rising to the bait.

It was as good as a confession, she knew, but the realisation hit far too late for her to take the words back, and the leering grin on Garak’s face told her that he knew it too. He’d heard the admission as surely as if she’d spoken the words themselves, and any spark of doubt she might have been able to kindle in him had she been in her right mind was completely extinguished now.

By not thinking clearly or quickly enough, she had practically put herself in chains, condemned herself to work as a slave and condemned Jadzia to suffer alone, the one thing she was here to prevent. She was doomed, damned, screwed over by a slip of the tongue and too much bloodwine. There was no reason for Garak to keep this precious little tidbit to himself, she knew that perfectly well; there was no reason for him to protect her or Jadzia, and whatever he knew, when the Intendant found out they were both as good as dead.

“I could tell her, you know,” Garak murmured, sensing her distress. The words were casual, conversational, but he was watching her with the cruel malice of a beast toying with its prey before biting its head off. This was all a big game to him, she realised, and felt sick from more than just the alcohol. “You know all too well, I’m sure, what happened the last time…”

There it was, the confirmation she’d simultaneously wanted and dreaded. He knew exactly who she was, and where she’d come from. Whether he knew about the real Jadzia’s dubious alliances, she had no way of knowing, but that wasn’t her concern now. She had more important things to worry about, namely saving her own skin.

“I’ve heard tell,” she said, as calmly as she could.

“Oh, I’m sure you have,” he replied. “But do you know how heartbroken she was? How betrayed?”

Dax tried to keep a straight face. “I can imagine.”

“No, I’m afraid you can’t.” His expression was very severe, as close to angry as she’d ever seen on him. “From what I understand of your people, imagination is something that’s sorely lacking over there.”

Dax opened her mouth to tell him that that wasn’t true, that she had more imagination than he’d probably ever seen in his life, but she was already dangerously close to screwing up everything she’d worked for in coming here, and she didn’t want to risk antagonising him any further. She huffed a little, letting him see that he had offended her, but bit her tongue to keep from arguing.

Garak’s expression had softened a little, aggression melting into contemplation. “What do you think she would do to you if she found out?” he asked, still keeping that same conversational tone.

“No worse than she’d do to you for letting it slip by unnoticed.” The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to figure out if they were smart or not. “You’re the one who let me onto the station, remember?”

“Touché,” he conceded with a loud laugh. “I value my own life a little more highly than yours, much as it pains me to admit.” He shook his head, amused. “Besides, we both know the little tyrant could stand to suffer a little humiliation once in a while… and who am I to stand in the way of a good pantomime?” He spread his arms wide in a flourishing gesture, and Dax weaved unsteadily in a vain attempt at dodging it. “Perhaps you have a little more imagination than I give you credit for.”

“Damn right I do,” Dax muttered, the bloodwine bolstering her once more. “And for your sake, you’d better keep yours active too.”

Garak laughed again, then quickly sobered, and Dax found herself wishing that she could do the same so easily. “Alas,” he cried. “Once again, it seems that my weakness for self-preservation will be my undoing.”

He sighed, though there was a definite note of relief in the sound; Dax could tell that he hadn’t exactly relished the idea of alerting the Intendant to another potential betrayal, even before he’d realised his own neck was on the line too. Dax kept her features as expressionless as she could, biting her tongue to keep from speaking out of turn, forcing him to say the words aloud, to make his alliance clear before she dared say anything more.

“Very well,” he went on, at long last. “A stalemate.”

Dax snorted. “You keep my secrets, and you get to keep your skin. Sounds fair to me.”

He laughed, bitter and humourless. “Well, now, I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I hate to disappoint your idealism, my dear, but there is no room for ‘fair’ here on Terok Nor.”

That was true enough, and Dax knew it. Still, though, she wasn’t about to underestimate him, or the knowledge he now held over her head. Even in her own universe, Elim Garak was hardly the most trustworthy soul in the galaxy, and the stakes were a thousand times higher here than they ever were back there. Deep Space Nine was a Bajoran station manned by Starfleet officers; Garak was the station’s only Cardassian resident, and he knew as well as anyone else that whatever ulterior motives he might have were well and truly diluted by his position. The only thing Dax needed to worry about when dealing with that Garak was a poorly-hemmed nightgown, and frankly, there were worse things.

This Garak, however, was a different story entirely. Terok Nor was a Cardassian station here, as much so as Deep Space Nine had ever been during the Bajoran occupation. Here, Garak was among his friends, and though his many attempts against the Intendant’s life had apparently amounted to nothing, Dax knew perfectly well that it didn’t make him any less of a threat, especially not to someone like her. She was the one in a precarious position here, the stranger in a strange land with no ties to anyone, armed and protected by only her own wits and charisma… and, right now, touched as she was by bloodwine, she couldn’t deny having a marked deficit of both.

Taking a calculated risk, she let him see just a hint of her dubiousness. Not enough that he might suspect she had more to hide than he was seeing, or at least she hoped not, but just enough to let him know she realised and respected the very real danger in what he was saying, and that she understood perfectly well how much she was depending on his honesty and integrity. It probably wouldn’t help her any — if he had a mind to betray her, he would do so no matter what she said or how she treated him — but it might stroke his ego, and with any luck that would endear him to her enough to still his tongue if he was still in two minds about it.

“Thank you,” she slurred, then caught herself and quickly covered. “For making sure I got back safely. I’m sure the Intendant will appreciate the gesture.”

“She’ll appreciate that I didn’t take advantage of your lowered inhibitions, I suppose,” he threw back with a calloused smirk. “We both know how upset she gets when someone manhandles her property before she has a chance to do it herself.”

There was that word again, _property_ , and Dax felt her stomach turn. “Yes, we do,” she mumbled, utterly failing to mask her her discomfort.

He smiled, but didn’t comment; instead, he just gave her an exaggerated mock-bow and raised a pointed eyebrow as he straightened. “A word of advice, before I go…” he offered lightly.

“If you must,” Dax grumbled, leaning against the door controls.

Garak smiled, sweet enough to further sour Dax’s fragile stomach. “The next time you decide to use her name to get free drinks, I’d strongly recommend asking her permission first.” He shot a lingering look at the bottle still in her hand, then added quite pointedly, “Her Majesty’s name is not to be taken in vain, as you should know. I wouldn’t like to be you when she gets back…”

It was a fair point, she supposed, and far less of a cut than she would have expected from him. Maybe he didn’t think an inebriated opponent was one worth trying to defeat, or maybe he was just sympathetic enough to take pity on someone who was as clearly out of their element as Dax was. Most likely, she supposed he just wanted to keep a safe distance and watch as she backed herself into a corner. What better way to enjoy the show than safely out of reach of the Intendant’s wrath?

Besides, why should he care what happened to her, good or bad? He had no interest in her. Why would he? Even the real Jadzia was practically a stranger to him, and this Dax must be even more so. She couldn’t exactly blame him for wanting to keep his head down when the inevitable chaos unfolded. Dax meant nothing to him, and the Intendant meant even less. Whatever happened, he stood to gain a great deal more by standing idle than by doing anything to either of them.

Well, let him do that, if he wanted. So long as he stayed out of her way — and, rather more importantly, out of the Intendant’s way — Dax didn’t really care what he did, or why. She acknowledged his so-called advice, such as it was, a thinly-veiled cut, with a nod and a wave, then counted out the seconds as he slunk off down the corridor. She waited, counting out a few more to steady her breathing, then slammed the door release controls with a shaking hand.

The full force of the bloodwine hit as the doors slid closed behind her, bringing with it the full force of Garak’s words, and she sank helplessly to the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest and clutching the bottle with both hands in a futile attempt to keep it — or herself — from spilling over.

She was angry, frustrated with herself so much more than with Garak. Even back in the universe she knew and loved, Garak was smarter than the average stooge, quick to learn and quicker to deduce; if she herself had been the one replaced and Jadzia left to wander Deep Space Nine, it wouldn’t surprise her at all to come back and learn that he had been among the first to figure it out. They didn’t spend very much time in each other’s company, that was true, but he was unfathomably perceptive. The rational corner of her mind, or what was left of it, knew that it made perfect sense that he would to see through her in this universe just as well. She knew that, but knowing it didn’t make it less of a bitter pill to swallow, and combined with the lingering aftertaste of too much bloodwine, that bitterness increased and increased until she could barely swallow it at all.

So, instead, she raised the bottle to her lips and gulped some more bloodwine. It didn’t taste any better, but she welcomed the fuzziness in her head that blocked out the rest.

The room was spinning now, but she didn’t care about that. She didn’t need the disorientation or dizziness to tell her that she’d had too much to drink; that much, she knew by herself. And yet, though she knew that she would regret it — and most of her already was — still, all she could think of was draining that bottle dry and crawling back to the bar to get it filled again, and then again, until she blacked out completely.

She had never blacked out from drinking in her life; truth be told, before she was joined, the young Jadzia never been much for drinking at all. Oh, she’d taken the odd mouthful of this or that on special occasions — in particular, her graduation from Starfleet Academy and the day she learned that she’d been chosen for joining — but those events were few and far between, and on the whole she’d always been too controlled to risk losing her inhibitions.

Then, of course, she’d been joined to Dax, and suddenly she was filled to overflowing with Torias’s freedom and Curzon’s love of all things sinful. He’d been a great drinker, of liquor in general and bloodwine in particular, and the repressed young Jadzia had taken to that particular habit as readily as any of his others. Truth be told, it had gotten her into only slightly more trouble than his equally passionate appreciation of pretty young women and razor-sharp Klingon weaponry.

More than anything, she wanted to indulge his appetites now. She could feel the fiery old man trampling around inside her head now, just as she had when she was first joined, hollering at the top of his lungs for more bloodwine, more action, more excitement. As usual he wanted more of everything, and as usual he didn’t stop to think that maybe the shy little girl he’d supervised through her initiate training did not share his unfathomably high constitution.

Curzon had spent his whole life building up an incredible tolerance to all things Klingon, and that included their head-spinning taste for bloodwine. He could drink a room full of hardened warriors under the table, and he often did… but Jadzia had only his memories, and as fun and educational as they often were, they didn’t help her where it mattered. For all that she felt like the gruff old man sometimes, her body was still young and unaccustomed to liquor in any quantity. Over the last couple of years, she had learned to hold her bloodwine a little better; she was tougher by now than most of her Starfleet compatriots, at least, but she still had a long way to go before she could even think of matching Curzon drink for drink. One day, maybe, but not today. And definitely not here.

It was so damn typical, she thought bitterly, closing her eyes in a futile attempt at blocking out his influence, and with it the spinning of the room. It was typical of Curzon in particular, but it was also typical of Dax hosts in general. They were supposed to be dead, weren’t they? They were supposed to be dead and buried and stuck in the past where they belonged. She was supposed to have their memories and their experiences, little flickering traces of their personalities, but that was all. She was supposed to have the good things, the things that helped the symbiont to grow and evolve and become a better creature, the things that fed the host with an arsenal of ways to better herself too, the things that deserved to live on and continue through life after life. She was supposed to be a link in the chain, a single atom in a much larger entity, but she was still supposed to be herself. Jadzia was supposed to be in charge, wasn’t she? Not Curzon. Not—

_Not me, you mean._

Dax trembled. “No,” she said out loud, though she knew that no-one was there. “Not you, either. Definitely not you.”

Somewhere in a quiet corner of her mind, not too far from where Curzon was still shouting for more bloodwine, Joran laughed. He didn’t say anything, but of course he didn’t need to. Curzon was loud and brash; he didn’t give advice or make suggestions or offer counsel. He screamed and shouted and kicked and stomped and did whatever the hell it took to make himself heard. If he wanted Dax to drink bloodwine, he would stampede around inside her head until she was utterly convinced that it was what she wanted too. If he wanted to stay up all night playing tongo, and to hell with the shift that started at oh-six-hundred hours, then he would make such a racket about it that Dax gave up because she knew she would never get to sleep anyway. Curzon didn’t ask for anything; he demanded it, like a child throwing a temper-tantrum, so loud and so arrogant that nobody, even Dax, could possibly argue with him.

Joran wasn’t like that. He wasn’t loud or arrogant, and he didn’t demand. He was clever and subtle, insidious in a way that past hosts weren’t supposed to be, and he drove Dax to the point of madness even when she was completely sober. He never raised his voice, never stomped around or kicked up a fuss. He never needed to. He wheedled his way into her thoughts, into her mind and her body, manifested in her dreams and her desires, forced himself into all the parts of her she’d thought were uniquely hers, and he did it all without the least resistance.

For all his volume and excess, there were parts of Jadzia that even Curzon made a point of leaving alone. He never invaded her dreams without permission, never intruded on her private feelings unless she let herself think about him, and he never tried to twist her desires into anything more or less than what she wanted them to be. It was easy for Dax to blame him sometimes for the way that she noticed certain things — the subtle curves of a shapely young ensign or the rocky muscles of a hardened security officer, and no doubt he was to blame for her sudden inexplicable attraction to Klingon forehead ridges — but they still felt fundamentally natural. He might have shaped her, yes, but the parts of her he influenced still felt organic, inherent. It felt like her. For all that it had his mark on it, she still felt like her. Like Dax. Not like…

_…not like me._

“Not like you.”

Dax choked down another mouthful of bloodwine. Her tongue felt thick and heavy, too big for her mouth, and the bitter aftertaste of the liquor mixed unpleasantly with the memory of Garak’s conversation. She closed her eyes against it, willing herself not to think too hard. Not about Garak, and definitely not about Joran. Not about the way he frightened her, the way he possessed her, the way he twisted everything she was. Not about the way he… the way he…

 _The way I excite you?_ Even his voice sounded like a smile. _The way I seduce you?_

“No,” she forced out, clenching her teeth, though she knew as well as he did that denying it wouldn’t make it any less true. “Not that. Not that.”

The fact was, that was exactly what he did. Joran didn’t need to shout or kick or do any of the things that Curzon did. He didn’t need to do anything more than whisper, to plant a thought or an idea or an image in her head, and Dax herself would do the rest. It wasn’t like Curzon at all; Curzon was hard to argue with, impossible sometimes, but at least Dax could argue if she wanted to. Benjamin told her often that he’d felt the same way about the old man, that he went along with him most of the time simply because it was too much trouble to try and argue with him. He was persuasive to a fault, but that was all he was: an arrogant cocky bastard with a big mouth. It was painfully frustrating sometimes, and all the more so after he talked her into drinking her weight in bloodwine and still spurring her on to take some more, but it wasn’t _bad_. He was an incorrigible rogue, but he would never hurt anyone.

What Joran did was worse than simply ‘bad’. What he did was invasive and wholly destructive. He slipped softly between the cracks of Dax’s self-awareness, and ever so gently made her think like him. He didn’t encourage, didn’t persuade, didn’t talk her into doing anything. He just was, and he made Dax believe that she was too. Where Curzon made her act, Joran made her feel. His violence pulsed through her veins; he injected it into her, filling her blood with things she didn’t want, shooting her full of hate and rage and driving her heart with it. He didn’t ask her permission, he just did it. He reshaped her from the inside out, twisting her into something else, whether she wanted him to or not, and when she finally fought him off, scratching and clawing at his presence with all the violence that he himself had put into her, he simply slipped into the shadows with a shrug and quietly waited for her to start dreaming.

Joran didn’t play fair. Curzon, for all his whining and all his arrogance and all his selfishness, played fair. If Dax really wanted to push away that inadvisable ‘one last cup’ of bloodwine, Curzon would complain but he would not force her hand. If she really insisted on sleeping through a late-night tongo match, he would roll his eyes but he would ultimately respect the decision and accept it as her right. He was a proper host, powerful and opinionated, filled with strength and personality, just like Torias and Emony and Audrid and all the others before him. His was exactly the kind of influence that Jadzia wanted to provide for Dax’s next host, whoever that may be, an influence that was worldly and experienced, a little headstrong but wise beyond words. Joran wasn’t a good host at all, and he didn’t behave the way that Curzon or any of the others behaved; one way or another, he would get what he wanted, whether Dax wanted it too or not, and if what he wanted was blood on Dax’s hands, then he wouldn’t let either of them rest until they were both soaked with it.

How could she be expected to overcome that? How could she be expected to fight when he refused to let her?

Feeling suddenly helpless, she leaned back against the wall, letting the solid contact steady her mind, grounding her and keeping her focused. She thought about her counterpart, the Jadzia of this universe, huddled underground in the Badlands, keeping company with a Benjamin Sisko who didn’t really care about what she was going through, warming his bed solely because it was better than being alone, exiled from her home for want of a dead lover. She wondered how she was doing, whether her hallucinations had worsened in the time since she’d left her. When she herself went through them, Benjamin and Julian had been so quick to drop everything to get her the help she needed, whisking her away to Trill almost before it had even hit home that she was in any real danger; she hadn’t had time to wonder what might have happened to her if they hadn’t been so fast to act, hadn’t stopped to think about what her fate would have been. What would happen to Jadzia, she wondered now, if she didn’t get out of this place soon enough? What would happen to her if she didn’t get out of here at all?

She had to trust in Garak’s promise to keep her secrets. She had to trust in the Intendant to be too wrapped up in her own ego to notice that the Jadzia Dax she had marked so thoroughly wasn’t the one she thought she knew. She had to trust in Joran to remember that he wasn’t Dax’s host any more, that he had no right to try and reshape Jadzia into something she didn’t want to be. She had to trust in a lot of things, and a lot of people, and it was so much harder when the one person she knew she could not trust was herself.

The hours passed in a haze of dizziness and borderline delirium, self-doubt closing in around her, chased away by occasional swigs from the slowly-diminishing bottle. The room spun, and her thoughts spun with it, bloodwine churning in her stomach and violence thrumming through her veins. It was easier to resist Joran like this, she realised, because her limbs didn’t have the strength to be destructive. They were loose and light, just like her head, and it was the closest thing to truly relaxed she’d felt in a very long time.

It was all she could do, really, just to hold herself together, to sit on the floor, head between her knees, trying to breathe as the floors tilted and the ceiling swerved. Whatever violent impulses were still alight in her, it didn’t really matter just then, because it was too much effort even just to raise her hand. What would she do with Jadzia’s knife now, anyway, even if her fumbling fingers could wrap around it? She couldn’t see straight, couldn’t keep her hands steady, couldn’t hold on to anything. And what if she tried to punch the bulkhead instead? She doubted she’d be able to hit it; like everything else, its surface tilted and bent impossibly before her swimming vision. What could the great Joran do with that? She laughed, wild and half-crazed. He could fill her up with all the anger in the world, all the hate and rage and fury in his dark and broken soul, but what good would it do him when she was too damn wasted to do anything about it?

She could still seethe, though, still drown in the sentiment and sensation, and that she did. Joran still held some power over her, diluted as it was, and he could still hold her down even if he couldn’t do anything to her. She still felt like him, still raged and hated like he did, still suffocated under the tide of his influence, but it was a comfort to know that at least her body was safe when she was like this.

By the time the Intendant returned, Dax was too drunk to notice.

She was sitting right by the doors when they opened, but she didn’t hear them, or the telltale authority of heavy boots on the plush carpet that marked the Intendant’s entrance. She couldn’t hear much of anything, really, even if she’d had the awareness to piece the sounds together; the roaring of her heartbeat in her ears and the threat of a queasy headache pounding behind her eyes overpowered everything else, and it was only when she felt slender fingers slip effortlessly under the fabric of her shirt, cupping her breast and squeezing, that she realised she wasn’t alone any more.

“…oh,” she heard herself mumbling, the sound coming out thick and unintelligible.

The Intendant chuckled, and Dax felt her grip tighten possessively around her breast. She was close, almost suffocatingly, and her body was urgent and hot as she pressed against her. Dax vaguely remembered the outfit she’d picked out for her this morning, but the fabric felt very different against her bare arms than it had looked from a safe distance. She whimpered as she felt a puff of warm air against the side of her face, another chuckle, or else a hungry little gasp, then lips claiming her own. She surrendered reflexively, opening to her more by instinct than invitation, and then the Intendant was licking the roof of her mouth, tongue warm and rough, claiming and owning and—

_Oh. Oh, yes. Oh, this. Oh._

She moaned, loud enough to surprise them both, and then her mouth was empty and the warmth surrounding her was gone.

From a vague distance — a few centimetres, a mile, who could tell? — she heard a satisfied hum, the low purr of approval that she had come to recognise as the Intendant, solely her, without so much as a trace of Nerys, and then the bottle was prised out of her numb hands.

“You’ve been drinking.”

Dax managed an affirmation, an apologetic little half-whimper that must have made very little sense. Still, though, it seemed to be enough to satisfy the Intendant, who laughed and shook her head. At least, Dax hoped she was shaking her head; if not, the room was spinning even more violently than she’d first thought.

“What am I going to do with you?” the Intendant husked.

Dax took a deep breath. She could feel the bloodwine swimming inside her, the queasy fog in her head and the roaring of her pulse. She thought about lurching forward, taking back her precious bottle and finishing it before the Intendant finished her. She thought about it, but what would be the point? She’d probably just flop forward and pass out if she tried to move anyway.

Idly, she wondered if that was why the Klingons drank it so much. The lingering revenant on her tongue tasted of glory and victory, of heat and passion, and it was only when she flicked it out to lick her lips that she found herself wondering if it was really the bloodwine that tasted like that, or if it was the Intendant. Did Nerys taste like this too? Did she taste like honour? Like passion? Like—

 _Don’t be stupid,_ she thought. _It’s just the bloodwine, that’s all. Curzon could tell you that._

She wondered too, whether perhaps some part of Curzon had been touched by Joran after all, if perhaps Joran had held some sway over the way he’d been drawn to the violence of the Klingons, their customs and their honour-tasting liquor. She wondered if that was why he drank so much and fought so hard and loved so furiously. She wondered… she wondered… oh, she wondered a lot of things. About Curzon, about Joran, and about herself as well.

But all the wondering in the world wouldn’t answer the Intendant’s question, and she could feel the impatience as potent as venom as sharp teeth nipped not-so-playfully at the base of her throat.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, because she couldn’t think of anything else. The air was thick, but so was the taste in her mouth. “What do you want to do with me?”

The Intendant leaned in a little further, seduction laced with threat as she bared her teeth. “You’re going to regret asking that question,” she purred, licking her lips.

Dax felt her head tilt back, skin on fire with sensation. “I hope so,” she whispered, and replaced the taste of honour with the taste of power.


	14. Chapter 14

It wasn’t the question she regretted.

Truth be told, for a long while she was too far gone to regret anything. The Intendant was far from gentle with her, but that was nothing new, and Dax’s body was lighter than usual, unburdened by the bloodwine. She was allowed to finish the bottle, no doubt mostly because the Intendant enjoyed the sight, licking her lips as Dax drained the dregs in a single long swallow, then yanking the empty bottle from her hands and throwing it against the wall.

It was all business after that, and Dax was grateful for the hum in her veins, bloodwine burning and clouding her head, making it bearable when the Intendant left her mark, branding with her teeth and twisting with the blade of that damned knife, opening up the same shallow cuts that were repaired and healed just a few hours ago. The tracks of blood excited her, made her wet, and when the Intendant drove those slender fingers deep inside her, three at once, ruthless and forceful and without warning, Dax barely even felt it at all.

Neither of them were in a hurry, but the whole thing passed by like a flash to Dax. She recalled vague flashes of half-felt sensation, coming back to herself every now and then to whimper at the impossibility of where she was, to remember Nerys but see nothing of her in the face looming above her. She just about knew what was happening but her dizzy brain struggled to piece it together, who she was or where or why. Was she Jadzia or Dax, or was this all Joran? All she knew was that she _felt_ , and not all of it was pleasant.

If she found a climax in the midst of all that chaos, she didn’t remember it at all, and if she offered anything in return, she wasn’t sure what. Her hands were numb, and her tongue was heavy in her mouth; if any part of her was still functional, it was outside of her control. Dimly, she heard her own voice crying out, dull and discordant snatches or sounds or words, but she had no idea at all what she was saying.

The Intendant, ever perceptive, was rather more aware of what was going on around her, and she wasn’t so quick to forget once it was over. She was always attentive to detail, it seemed, and even in her inebriated state Dax knew better than to underestimate her. As soon as they were done, she propped herself up on one elbow, keeping the other hand pressed firmly between Dax’s thighs, fingers still buried deep, and gave her such a cold look that the severity of it pierced even the heavy fog of bloodwine.

“And who, pray tell, is ‘Joran’?”

Dax felt herself blanch. She turned her face away and pressed it to the bed, letting out a pathetic little whimper that she prayed wouldn’t make it past the pillow. “What?” she managed, weak and muffled.

“You heard me.” She could hear the smile in the Intendant’s voice, a predatory sneer that threatened pleasure as well as pain if Dax had the good sense to play along with this. “Whoever he is, if all that moaning is anything to go by, you’re quite taken with him. And, well, a girl gets jealous, you know.”

Dax tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry; her tongue was thick with bloodwine and Bajoran heat, overwhelmed and virtually unusable. Maybe she had reciprocated the Intendant’s advances after all, she mused, and tried not to gag at the cloying taste, slick and sharp and potent.

Was it true? She knew better than to question anything the Intendant had said, knew better than to wonder when the truth was right there in front of her. How else would the Intendant know Joran’s name if not from Dax’s own lips? But had she really moaned it in the throes of passion? Had she really called out ‘Joran’ in the moment of climax? Had she found a climax at all? Or had the Intendant simply misinterpreted, reading pleasure where there was only pain? Had she been calling his name or cursing it? She couldn’t remember.

“I don’t…” She made another attempt at swallowing, but found that she felt too sick to even try. “I…”

“Oh, you can do better than that,” the Intendant husked, and when she flexed her fingers inside Dax they felt like solid steel. Dax whimpered, clenching tight around them, and the Intendant hissed her dissatisfaction. “You know perfectly well that I don’t take kindly to hearing my lovers calling other people’s names in my bed. Or anywhere else, for that matter, but let’s focus on the matter at hand for now, shall we?” She flexed again, harder. “Who is Joran?”

Dax groaned, and tried to flinch away, but the Intendant held her in place as much by the weight of her glare as by the strength of her hand. “It’s not what you think,” she mumbled at last, when she realised that escape was not an option. “He… it’s not… he’s not ‘another person’, exactly.”

“And what exactly do you mean by ‘exactly’?” the Intendant demanded, without so much as a breath of irony.

The look on her face was terrifying, hate blazing like liquid fire behind her eyes, so much like Nerys when she got some righteous cause in her head, and Dax found that far more intimidating than the knife that lay discarded at her side or the fingers that threatened danger of a much sharper kind between her legs. It was deeply upsetting to see so much malice in Kira’s eyes, so much violence lurking beneath the surface, the promise of terrible things if Dax didn’t play just so. She looked so much like her… but oh, she looked so much like _him_ …

She shuddered, turning away before she could lose what little control she still held over her gag reflex.

Under normal circumstances, she supposed it wouldn’t be the most complicated of conversations. The Intendant must know something of Trill culture and how it worked, of the symbiont in her belly and what it meant; after all, she knew enough to understand precisely how deep a cut it was for a Trill to be exiled, and the joining process itself was far less personal than that. She must have some idea of how it worked, at least on a rudimentary level, and Dax herself had explained the concept more than enough times through her various lives that it shouldn’t be too hard to sit up and talk it through. Jealous or not, not even the Intendant could be offended by a long-dead sociopath. At least, Dax really hoped not.

Frustration bubbled up inside her, supplanting the headiness and the nausea for a few precious moments, though no doubt bolstered by the bloodwine in much the same way. In any other situation, she could make her understand a little deeper than the basics of ‘he’s me’; she could make her see just how thoroughly Joran was responsible for what she was, for the terrible thing she’d become, for all the anger and the violence and those twisted desires that the Intendant found so deliciously enticing. She could, she knew, and if she’d been the least bit sober, she would have done all of that without a second thought.

But she wasn’t sober, not at all, and her head was as much a mess as the sheets tangled up around her body. She could barely see straight, much less think straight, and the Intendant’s piercing stare and pulsing fingers really weren’t helping to clear either of those things. It was hard enough to explain when she wasn’t fighting just to keep the bottle down, hard enough to talk someone through all of this when they weren’t as sordid and perverse as Joran himself. She could feel his influence even now, skittering under her skin like a colony of insects, as deadly to a joined Trill as anything on Bajor’s moons, but it was more than she could do to put that feeling into words. It was more than she could do to put anything at all into words, and she wished that she could just say that instead — _‘I can’t talk, I can’t explain, I can’t do anything’_ — but she was afraid of the fire she saw in the Intendant’s eyes, afraid of being burned, afraid of dying choked by smoke and the taste of Bajor and bloodwine.

“Can we discuss this later?” she begged, then immediately had to bite down on a cry as the Intendant pulled roughly out of her, leaving her feeling bruised and empty. “I’m… I mean… well, I’m a little bit…”

“You’re thoroughly drunk,” the Intendant finished for her, shaking her head as she licked her fingers clean. “That’s not an excuse. I asked a question, and I expect an answer.”

Dax groaned. Without the Intendant holding her in place, she was free to scramble back a little and put some distance between them. Not as much as she would have liked, of course, and the distance certainly wouldn’t help the explanation, but she desperately needed some space to catch her breath, and she took it gratefully. She could feel those fire-cold eyes on her as she repositioned herself on the other side of the bed, curling in on herself and trying to breathe.

She supposed she must look very tiny all of a sudden, eyes half-closed and chin resting on the points of her knees as she tried to think through the haze of liquor and the dull ache that her body was just starting to recognise again. The pain felt good, like it always did since Joran taught her to enjoy it, and she indulged in a moment or two just to take it in and let it steady her.

The Intendant didn’t try to interrupt the moment, but Dax could feel the impatience radiating out from her, and she knew better than to keep her waiting for too long. If she knew what was good for her — and right then, she wasn’t sure she did — she would take only as long as she needed, just long enough to carve a word or two out of the nonsense within, to give some voice to the unfettered chaos in her head. Just long enough to figure out a way to explain the living torment that was Joran Belar without inviting the Intendant to want more of him…

…because that was exactly what she was afraid of.

If Jadzia was here in her place, Dax knew this would be a completely different story. Jadzia was defensive to a fault, even beyond Dax’s own levels, though she supposed that was understandable. This was a very different universe, and it was based on her own experiences that Jadzia was so afraid of being judged or dismissed by her would-be friends. Those people, Sisko and the others, they didn’t understand what it was to be a Trill, much less to be joined, and they didn’t want to either; there was no room for alien anatomy in the midst of a rebellion, after all. Dax remembered the look on Jadzia’s face, suspicion and doubt turning her spots dark and her skin pale when she told her that she understood, the caution giving way to unabashed astonishment when she realised it was true. Dax’s heart ached to remember it, to wonder what it must be like to be so untrusting, to live in a world where it made more sense to hide than to care.

She herself was hardly the most forthcoming person in the universe, but at least she could look inside and see that the flaw was her own. She was guarded and hyper-defensive because she hated herself, because even now she couldn’t look into the mirror and not see a thousand useless things, a little girl who wasn’t good enough or a psychopathic killer that wanted to devour everything around him. She kept everything bottled up because she was afraid of weakness, because even now she wanted nothing more than to just be good enough. She put the weight on herself, and she had nobody else to blame when it all became too heavy.

Jadzia wasn’t so fortunate. She didn’t hide because she was scared of exposing herself; she hid because she had to, because nobody understood and nobody wanted to. If Dax opened up, she had a queue of friends a mile long who would listen. Jadzia did not. She hid because hiding was all she knew, whether she was truly afraid or not, because it was the safest option, and sometimes the only one. She hid because any amount of weakness in a universe like this was as good as death. For someone like Jadzia, even exile wasn’t as high a price as letting herself be exposed. She hid because she couldn’t afford not to.

Dax could. She could afford to choose her battles, and that was why she didn’t. She hid because it was easier, because in the end she knew it didn’t matter. She hid when she was embarrassed, when she was lost or felt small, when the idea of seeing herself was too much to bear. She hid for any one of a thousand reasons, some good and some bad. Right now, she hid because she was afraid.

She was afraid of Joran; he was inside her, a part of her, and given half a chance he would overpower her completely. She was afraid of his memories, afraid of his personality, afraid of everything he was and everything he wanted her to become. She was afraid, more than anything, of the way she couldn’t quite tell the two of them apart any more, the way she felt so connected to him, the rage and the violence and all of those terrible things that haunted her dreams. She was afraid of the taste of blood, the swell of bruises, the shattering of bone. She was afraid because with every passing moment she enjoyed it more and more.

And that was why she was afraid of the Intendant too. She wasn’t afraid of what would she might do to her; Joran had taken care of that. Nothing the Intendant did could hurt her; even when she tried, Dax was the one begging her to do it. No, she was afraid of the Intendant because she wasn’t frightened by her. She wasn’t the least bit affected by any of the twisted and sordid things that the Intendant did to her; the pain turned to pleasure and the pleasure wasn’t quite so sweet without the pain. That was what terrified her. The Intendant enticed her, thrilled her; she was as intoxicating as bloodwine to that place deep inside of Dax that was used to nothing more than innocent daydreams and illicit feelings. It was seductive, the way that the Intendant connected with all the places that Joran held in his sway, the way they connected with each other, and the part of her that was just Jadzia was very, very afraid.

The Intendant was so much like Joran. She shared his inner violence, his bloodlust. She shared all of those twisted desires, the hunger and the want, and she brought out the very worst of them in Dax. While Dax spent every waking moment fighting with every ounce of strength she had to keep from giving in to the part of herself that wanted to hurt — to hurt others, to hurt herself, to hurt anything that breathed — the Intendant was coaxing those same things out of her, honing them with ruthless efficiency. She took everything that Joran was, everything he wanted Dax to be, and turned it into something acceptable. No, worse, she turned it into something _good_.

When Joran made Dax clutch the knife by its blade, suck in her breath and hiss at the sweet bite of pain, delight in the thin red rivers carving paths through her palm, she felt sick and alive. When he made her pound the walls until her knuckles were swollen and bruised, she felt humiliated and invigorated. When he shaped her dreams into twisted visions of violence, she woke bathed in cold sweat and slick heat. The only comfort she drew from any of it was in knowing that even when it made her feel alive it also made her feel dirty, that even when it made her feel good it also made her feel wrong. It was the one tiny shred of herself that she had left to cling to, and the damned Intendant took that and cast it aside like it was nothing. She didn’t just indulge Joran’s violence; she relished it, and she made Dax relish it too.

How was Dax supposed to explain all of that? How was she supposed to look the Intendant in the eye and tell her how frightened she was of all the violence that she took such pleasure in? How was she supposed to explain that it wasn’t really her, that everything the Intendant loved so much was really Joran, that she hated it even as it thrilled her? How was she supposed to look up and beg for her to stop abusing all those things that so excited them both?

“Jadzia.”

The Intendant didn’t often call her by her name, but when she did it was always with an underlying threat, like even her identity was something she could strip away from her, just as quickly and easily as anything else. Dax found herself flinching at the sound of it, in a way she never had before. Already, this universe was branding its mark on her; she wasn’t one of them, but she was starting to understand why they behaved the way they did, what had made them this way. She thought again of Jadzia, of how quickly and readily she had shrugged off the strangeness when Dax had called her by her name. Did the Intendant talk to her like this too? Did she use her name like a weapon, a lash held up high, just waiting for the perfect moment to strike?

She imagined Jadzia curled up like this, cringing at the edge of the Intendant’s bed, recoiling at the sound of her name. It cut deep, but it gave her strength too, bolstered her with determination never to let either one of them bow to this woman again.

With some effort, she sat up, reeling as the room lurched and swerved all over again. “Did you have any luck finding my benzocyatizine?” she asked, speech slurred almost beyond recognition.

The Intendant narrowed her eyes, but Dax ignored the warning that flashed behind them. “Didn’t those Trill socialites ever teach you not to answer a question with a question?”

“It’s…” Dax started, then paused to clear her throat, shaking the liquor from her voice. Her tongue was still too thick to make any sense, her head too cloudy to try and make it, but she did the best she could. “It’s relevant.”

With an irritated huff, the Intendant inched closer; what little personal space Dax had gleaned for herself was gone in a heartbeat, shattered like everything else in this place, bowing to the Intendant’s iron will.

“All right,” she said, making it clear by her tone that she was only humouring her because she wanted to, not because Dax had asked her to. “Because you are apparently incapable of remembering your place without it… yes, your precious benzocyatizine is on its way. I’m informed it should arrive within three days at the most. That is, assuming those worthless Trill smugglers don’t double-cross me…” Her features hardened. “But then, you know your countrymen at least as well as I do, and you know how little their word is worth. So I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”

“They’ll deliver,” Dax insisted hazily, blithely optimistic.

The Intendant ignored her, closing what little space remained between them. “Now…” she pressed, taking Dax roughly by the shoulder and shaking her. “Relevant or not, it’s your turn to answer my question.”

Dax winced. Not for the first time, she desperately wished she’d thought twice before over-indulging in bloodwine and fogging up what little still remained of her senses. She really could have used them now, her own or one of the others’. Tobin’s ingenuity, Lela’s stoicism, Emony’s ambition, even Audrid’s misguided optimism. Any of them, even Jadzia’s wishful thinking. But of course, they’d all abandoned her the second she’d picked up that damned bottle. Even Curzon had disappeared, it seemed, not that it should have surprised her; if he couldn’t even volunteer a fragment of his own endurance to a problem that was his fault in the first place, what chance did she have of convincing him or the others to help her now that it had taken hold?

None, she decided, and braced herself to wade in on her own.

“Joran,” she mumbled, testing the shape of his name in her mouth, pleased when she didn’t tremble. “It… that is, _he_ … well, he’s me. Sort of, anyway. You know how it works, being joined…”

“Yes, yes,” the Intendant snapped, sharp and impatient. “You’ve told me all about it, countless times. In fact, sometimes I’m certain that you made up the whole thing just as an excuse to listen to the sound of your own voice.” She leaned in, flicking her tongue lazily over the spots at Dax’s throat, relishing the way she shivered. “Not that I mind, of course. I could listen to you talk about yourself for days and days, and never get bored. You get so adorably animated…” She smiled against Dax’s jaw, scraping lightly with her teeth. Dax closed her eyes, but the bloodwine made her feel like she was falling, so she opened them again and braced against the Intendant’s hips. “It really is quite endearing.”

“You always did have a taste for narcissism,” Dax replied, proud of how steady the quip sounded, and the Intendant rewarded her with another bite, this one less gentle. Dax took a deep breath, struggled to think. “But then, that means you know. You understand what it’s like. Joran is… he’s my… I mean, her… that is… the symbiont’s…” She floundered clumsily; Dax didn’t struggle with pronouns as a rule, but even Curzon had to admit that they became a thousand times more complicated once he’d gotten a few drinks inside him. “He was one of Dax’s past hosts.”

The Intendant chuckled at her awkwardness. “That’s all?”

Dax huffed her indignation. It sounded so simple when she put it like that, so calloused and dismissive. She wanted to reach out and strangle her, to choke the life out of her and watch with a smile as her fingers left deep marks on the perfect skin of her throat, wanted to leave her mark just as the Intendant had left her own, so that all of Terok Nor could see and know who brought down their glorious leader. The urge was almost overpowering, a cataclysm of urgency inside her head, and before she even realised she was doing it she had reached for Jadzia’s knife, gripping it by the handle for once, and struggling desperately to find enough willpower to put the damn thing down.

“That’s all,” she affirmed, fingers trembling around the knife.

Slowly, carefully, the Intendant prised the weapon out of her hand. She held it by the flat of the blade, balanced delicately between her fingers, and Dax tried not to think about how easy it would be to dislodge it; just a degree or two in either direction would turn the sheets red with fresh blood, and then where would the Intendant be? Dax’s mouth went dry at the thought, so excruciatingly tempting, and she he bit her tongue to keep from acting on it. The pain grounded her, and she steadied herself against it, watching through half-lidded eyes as the Intendant studied her reflection in the gleaming metal.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asked, tearing her attention away from her own eyes for a moment to meet Dax’s. In her characteristically calculating way, she looked almost thoughtful. “You’re such a strange species, you Trills. I don’t think I’ll ever understand that ridiculous obsession you have with those parasites.”

“Symbionts,” Dax corrected angrily. “They’re not parasites, they’re symbionts.”

“Is there a difference?” the Intendant asked, shrugging as though it wasn’t worth her time to even try and understand. “They’re both disgusting creatures. Frankly, that’s all I need to know.”

Though she knew this could only be a deliberate attempt to antagonise her, Dax couldn’t help rising to it just the same. No doubt the Intendant knew that she would, and the smile on her face as Dax glared at her was entirely too smug. She was being baited, and she hated it, but even as she did she couldn’t bring herself to be quiet. It was taking everything she had to keep from carving up both of their hands with Jadzia’s knife, to keep from losing Curzon’s damn bloodwine all over the sheets, to keep from giving in to the hate in her head. With all that going on at the same time, was it any wonder that she didn’t have any strength left to take the high ground?

“There’s nothing disgusting about the symbionts,” she growled out, voice like gravel. “They’re noble and intelligent creatures, and it’s an honour to be chosen for joining. It’s…” She trailed off, shaking her head, frustrated and foggy as it was. “Forget it. You’ll never understand. I don’t even know why I’m even trying to explain it to you.”

“Neither do I,” the Intendant replied smartly. “Not when there are so many more interesting things you could explain to me…”

Dax groaned. Her head felt heavy, but her body felt impossibly light. Again, her hands itched for the want of the knife, and her mouth watered at the sight of it dangling so tantalisingly between the Intendant’s fingers. More than anything else in the world just then, she wanted to reach out and take it, to feel the sharpened curve against her palm and press the perfect tip to the Intendant’s throat, to bask in blood and pain and fear, to drown in the violence of it all. For a moment it was all she could think of, and she balled her fists in a desperate attempt to keep holding the urge at bay, letting her hands lower to grip the sheets, breathing through her mouth in tortured gasps.

It must have been obvious, how close she was to losing control, because the Intendant naturally took advantage of her descent into weakness. She smiled, effortlessly flipping the knife to her other hand, and trailed it over Dax’s exposed skin. Because she was nothing if not an expert in her sadism, she never let the blade actually make contact, holding it just close enough for Dax to feel its presence even with her eyes closed, just enough to send tremors of anticipation shuddering through her as the point hovered less than a hair’s breadth above the spots at her temple, her jaw, the line of her throat, her shoulder, her clavicle, her breasts…

“Is it Joran who makes you like this, I wonder…” the Intendant mused. Dax flinched sharply at the question, and the Intendant rewarded her by letting the tip of the knife make just the tiniest ghost of contact with her searing skin; not enough to draw blood, of course, but Dax could hardly stand the threat of it. “Is he the one who brings out all of that glorious violence in you?”

“It’s not glorious,” Dax insisted. For a painful moment, all she could think of was Curzon. Curzon with his bloodwine, Curzon with his women, Curzon with his damned Klingons. It was Curzon who shaped her tongue now, and Curzon who dragged the words from her throat. “There’s no honour in it.”

“Who said anything about honour?” the Intendant demanded, laughing like she’d never heard such a preposterous idea in her life. “All I care about is pleasure.”

As if to emphasise the point, she let the knife trail just a little closer, circling the hyper-sensitive skin around Dax’s nipple and just barely skimming the surface, a delicate half-touch that made her tremble even harder. It was as much with fear as arousal this time, the sheen of cold sweat dousing the slick heat, and she wanted nothing more than to flinch away, to crawl to the other side of the bed, to hide from all this. But of course she couldn’t do that; hadn’t she already tried to hide from her problems in a bottle of bloodwine? And where had that got her, besides nauseous and confused?

The Intendant was relentless, though, and it was too much. Too much sensation, the promise of pain and the promise of pleasure, and Dax hated that she didn’t know which one she ached for more. She tried so hard to remember that it was wrong, that the two were not the same, that there was nothing pleasurable in pain, that there never was and never could be, but the truth slipped between her fingers like the blade dancing between the Intendant’s.

Curzon was right; she knew that now. There was no honour in this, but she couldn’t do anything about it now. She couldn’t, though she wanted to, because for all that her mind was screaming at her to resist, her body was saying another thing entirely. Her mind rebelled, but that didn’t stop her fists from gripping the sheets so tight she almost stripped them from the bed, and it didn’t stop the want from slicking her thighs. When she shivered, it wasn’t because she was sickened, and when her flesh prickled and became over-sensitised, it certainly wasn’t with discomfort. It didn’t matter how wrong it was; all she felt was need.

“Stop it,” she hissed, because that was the only fight she had left inside her, a rough-voiced plea forced out through clenched teeth without the least bit of sincerity. “Stop encouraging him… me… _this_.”

The Intendant hummed her acknowledgement, but she didn’t stop. Of course she didn’t stop. Why would she? This was exactly what she wanted. And she knew that it was exactly what Dax wanted too.

“I think I understand now,” she murmured, almost to herself, and pounced.

The next thing Dax knew, she was on her back, knuckles white as she flailed for purchase with one hand and bit down on the other to keep from crying out. The Intendant was crouched above her, knees spread out on either side of her ribs, wet heat pressing down against her stomach, a disorienting distraction as the blade danced down between her breasts.

Dax’s mind was a maelstrom, made fuzzy by so much more than bloodwine this time, and she could barely think through the deafening cavalcade of voices screaming in mixed messages and contradictory responses, _“no, no, no…”_ in one moment and _“more, please, more…”_ in the next, Jadzia sobbing as she breathed in and Joran whispering as he breathed out, until she didn’t know where either of them began any more. Where was Dax in all this? What did the symbiont want?

“Poor Jadzia,” the Intendant purred, the name like a phaser-blast between the eyes. “Poor sweet Jadzia. How confusing it must be, to hate the thing you love.”

“I don’t…” Dax gritted out against the side of her fist.

“You don’t love it?” The Intendant’s voice was a husky drawl, tempting and terrifying. “Or you don’t hate it?”

“I don’t…”

But she couldn’t finish. The truth was, she did both; she did love it, and she did hate it, and just thinking about it just made her head ache even more than it already was. She felt disoriented and deeply melancholy, and her head was starting to throb with a queasy headache that promised far worse to come. She wanted to drown it all out, the sour stomach and the clouded thoughts, the liquor-induced discomfort and the way the Intendant was making her relish even that. More than anything, she wanted to end it all, to shove the Intendant off and away from her, to roll over and nurse her pulsing body and her pounding head, to just close her eyes and shut all of this out.

But then, of course, what good would that do? She couldn’t hide from this place, from the ravages of the bloodwine or the ravages of the Intendant. She couldn’t hide, so why even try?

This place was worse than any nightmare, she thought dully. It was worse than even the darkest of her dark dreams. At least dreams brought with them the promise of waking. When she was awake, she could hide from the dreams, and they could not touch her, but out here she was helpless and there was nowhere to hide. The Intendant wanted to know all about her damned dreams, imagining them to be some treasure trove of twistedness… but what could Dax tell her, except that this was worse?

It was worse because it was real, and worse even than that because the Intendant looked so much like Kira. Even now, Dax tried to ignore that fact as best she could, tried to keep from thinking of how easily she had fallen into bed with this woman who shared Kira’s face, how it had nothing to do with her mission or Jadzia or anything else. She knew that the Intendant was not Nerys, and she didn’t try to convince herself that she was… but oh, how much easier this all was when her body shared the same curves, the same sinew, the same lines and angles. She tried so hard to ignore all of that, to push it aside and think of the Intendant as someone else, someone completely separate from Kira Nerys, but it was difficult, and so much more so when the Intendant encouraged all those things that Dax’s Kira told her that she would overcome.

In one moment she could hear Kira telling her it would be all right, that she would move past this, that if she herself could do it, anyone could. And then in the very next heartbeat, there was the Intendant, not just real but present too, hovering over her with her hands on her body and her hips bearing down in all the right — wrong — _right_ places, telling her exactly the opposite, telling her again and again that indulging the violence inside of her was good, that it was thrilling and exciting and wonderful. She reinforced everything that Joran wanted her to believe, everything he forced into her, and how could Dax cling to half-faded memories of a dim and distant Kira when this one was here and real and now? How could hope to resist when all she could hear, from within and without, were beautiful voices urging her to give in?

“Jadzia.”

The name stung again, and Dax reflexively turned her face away from the sound of it, wincing as the edge of the knife’s blade broke the skin. “Please,” she whispered, though even she didn’t know what she was asking for.

The Intendant smiled. So sweet, so tempting. So beautiful. “You really are quite exquisite when you get angry, my dear. Why deny yourself?”

“Because it’s not me,” Dax insisted, pulling her fist out of her mouth and wrapping it around the Intendant’s hand where she held the knife to her breast. “It’s him.”

“But you are him,” the Intendant pointed out. She sounded almost academic, and the tone of her voice felt very out of place against such an intimate backdrop. “Or, well… I suppose, technically speaking, he’s you. But then, isn’t it all really the same thing?”

“No,” Dax argued, but her voice was weak and shaky, and she doubted the Intendant would be convinced. “It’s not the same. We’re not the same. It’s not… he’s not… I’m not…”

“Oh, but you are,” the Intendant urged eagerly. “I still have cuts and bruises from that delicious temper of yours.” Her eyes were lidded now, heavy with arousal. “I could have gotten them healed, you know, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to feel them while I was on duty, to think of you while I taught those lazy Terrans a lesson about hard work. Can you imagine how exciting that was? Feeling your mark on me as I handed out execution sentences… feeling the throbbing under my clothes and remembering how delicious you looked on your back… or, better yet, on your knees…” She licked her lips, shivering with delight. “Do you have any idea how many times I thought about summoning you and making you take me right there in front of all those ungrateful slaves?”

Dax whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut. The idea sickened her, coating her tongue with something so much more unpleasant than the stale aftertaste of bloodwine, but far worse than that, it sent a jolt of desire between her legs too. She wanted to be sick, to give up the fight against the bloodwine and show the Intendant exactly how she felt, to make the point so violently that neither of them could possibly deny it, but at the same time the rest of her body was igniting, hot and slick where the Intendant was pressing down against her and head spinning with something that definitely wasn’t nausea. She felt so sick, so horrified… but oh, she was so wet too…

She hated it. She hated it so much.

But of course, that was part of the problem, wasn’t it? Hate led to rage and rage led to violence, and then she was right back where she started, so angry and so filled with bloodlust. Before she even knew what was happening, she had turned the knife right back on the Intendant, fingers locked together like iron, squeezing the Intendant’s until she had no choice but to yield, and they both moaned in unison as the sharpened tip traced a deliberate path over that perfect Bajoran jaw.

“That’s it…” the Intendant coaxed, driving her hips down on top of Dax’s, igniting the want and the fury in near-equal measure. “Indulge me. Indulge _yourself_.”

“No.” It was a half-hearted protestation, and not much of one. Dax squeezed her eyes shut, trying desperately to block it all out. “I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this.”

“But you do.” It didn’t help at all; being blind to the sight of Kira’s face hovering above her did nothing to shield her from the sound of her voice, the low husk and the breathy promise, and it definitely didn’t shield her from the physicality, strong hips grinding down against her own. “Do you really think I can’t feel how desperately you want it?”

Dax sat up, or tried to, sinking her teeth deep into the Intendant’s shoulder and filling her mouth with the taste of flesh. “Shut up.”

“Why?” the Intendant asked with a mocking laugh. “It won’t change anything, will it? It won’t stop you from wanting.”

The knife trembled under Dax’s fingers. Suddenly, she was shaking, and the blade was shaking with her, just grazing the skin at the Intendant’s jaw. She tried to let go, to drop it, but with staggering speed the Intendant brought up her other hand, covering Dax’s and her own, and holding the knife firmly in place. Dax willed herself to stop, to pull free, to push the Intendant away, to end this now, but the sensation was bigger than she was, and that traitorous arousal just surged even higher as the blade broke the skin.

Rocking her hips, the Intendant leaned down, breath hot against the side of Dax’s head. “You should blame the liquor,” she husked. “It’d be a better excuse than _‘the voices in my head made me do it’_.”

Dax turned her face away, unable to keep watching as the knife slipped a little deeper, biting her tongue to keep from licking at the bead of blood. “I don’t need an excuse.”

“Oh, I agree.” She licked lazily at the spots beneath Dax’s ear. “I don’t know why you’re so uptight about it at all.”

“I’m not…” Dax started, but the words died in her throat, drowned by the revenant tastes of blood and bloodwine. “This isn’t… I’m not uptight. I’m just… I…”

“Oh, but you are.” There was a deliberate softness to the Intendant’s voice now, like she wasn’t just coaxing the reactions from Dax’s body, but from her mind as well, like she knew exactly the effect she was having, and exactly how hard Dax was fighting to keep it from overpowering her. “You’re incredibly uptight, my dear. And it really is such a tragic shame. I wish you could see how radiant you are when you lose control. You are beautiful, Jadzia. Your anger makes you so beautiful.”

“Stop,” Dax whimpered, flinching away from those words whispered on lips so like Kira’s but so painfully different. “Stop saying that. Stop…”

“Why should I?” The curiosity was genuine, and that just made it hurt even more. “It’s the truth. You’re so deliciously violent, so unrestrained. Not even that traitor Benjamin Sisko was half as wild as you are… and believe me, that’s really saying something.”

Dax choked on a sob, then choked again as the Intendant’s shifting hips drew a stifled groan from the back of her mouth. With all the strength she had left, which wasn’t very much, she yanked the knife away from them both and hurled it across the room as hard as she could. It hit the far bulkhead with an echoing clang, failing to find purchase there and clattering noisily to the floor, both sounds smothered almost instantly by the Intendant’s laughter.

“There’s no shame in this, Jadzia,” she murmured, and Dax groaned again, louder, as her body agreed. “You have so much fury inside you, so much anger, so much of that radiant violence. Frankly, I still don’t understand why you’re so hesitant to let yourself enjoy it. We’re both consenting adults, are we not? Why are you so ashamed of something that can bring us both so much pleasure?”

“Because it doesn’t!” Dax cried, willing her body to remember that, to remember who it belonged to, to remember the difference between pleasure and pain, right and wrong, Kira and the Intendant. “It doesn’t!”

“You can say it all you want,” the Intendant said with another breathy laugh. “But that won’t make it true.”

To punctuate her point, she took Dax’s wrists in her hands, circling them easily with those long slender fingers, and raising them inch by inch between their bodies. Dax bit down on her lip to keep from crying out again, then gagged on a gasp as the Intendant brought Dax’s hands up to wrap tight around her throat, a stranglehold of her own making with Dax’s fingers as the unwitting noose.

Dax tried to resist, to pull back, to ignore the thrall of pulsing warm flesh beneath her fingers, a yielding body willing to let her take it, of eagerness and readiness and breath stuttering through the spaces in her grip. She tried to pull away, but the Intendant held her fast, and that in turn meant that Dax had no choice but to hold her fast as well. She closed her eyes against the unwanted contact, the Intendant’s skin all too familiar as it bent to her grasp, to both of them, open and trusting and so enticingly vulnerable.

Just like the rest of it, her body reeled on the brink of two violently conflicted emotions, disgust in one second and excitement in the next, the power and the potency of the moment, strength coursing through her veins, the Intendant’s throat so open and exposed beneath her clenching fingers. She wanted to draw back, to pull away, hating where this was going, but the Intendant held her in place, her fingers as strong as iron as they pressed down on Dax’s own and forced her grip to tighten until she was sure it must be unbearable.

“Pleasure,” the Intendant whispered, the word choked and raw as she forced it out through the gaps left by Dax’s fingers. “Tell me you don’t feel it, Jadzia.”

“I don’t…” Dax choked. “I don’t… I…”

But she did. With every breath and in every nerve, she did feel it. The Intendant had taken care of that. The heat between her thighs was almost maddening, the pressure from the Intendant’s hips coupling with Joran’s frenzied desire to bring out an urgency in her that was almost primal. Whether she was willing to accept it or not, it was there, and it would not be banished. Pleasure, just like the Intendant said, and she hated that she was right, hated that it was there, hated that she wasn’t strong enough to ignore it. She hated all of this, but she wanted it too, and she could try to deny it all she wanted, but the Intendant was right about that too: she did want this, and no matter how desperately she tried to resist, the truth was that it did bring her pleasure.

 _Pleasure_. The kind of pleasure that was still an alien concept to the young Jadzia, the kind that the old man Curzon used to know four or five times a night, the kind that Torias had known a great many times but only truly understood with Nilani, the kind that Emony would enjoy every now and then (by her own hand or someone else’s; it was all the same to her) but never really connected with. So many different Daxes, so many different kinds of pleasure, but all of their combined experience amounted to nothing when faced with this. Oh, Curzon liked it rough sometimes, and Emony understood the thrill of experimentation too, but that was nothing like this.

This wasn’t some kind of experiment, and there was no safe word here. The danger was very real, violence threatening to spill over into something worse, closer and closer with every passing second, and Dax didn’t know how to deal with it. Sexual violence was one thing, but this was something else entirely; this violence was inside of her, and the twisted creature here was Dax herself. The Intendant might think she was playing a game, pushing to see how much Dax could take, but if she pushed too far, she would be the one broken and bloodied.

Maybe the plan was the Intendant’s, but the execution was all Dax. The violence wasn’t something done to her; she was the one doing it. The hands locked around the Intendant’s throat were her own, and she was the one pressing down now; the intent was real, and it was all her own. It was raw and it was visceral, and Dax was so very frightened.

But, oh, it felt so good, didn’t it? Even as she flinched away from it, she pulled it closer, fingers tightening and breath coming in needy little gasps. The heat, the tension, the pressure and the friction from the Intendant’s hips, the Intendant herself so much more urgent now that her breathing was so restricted, sensation heightened for them both. The look on her face as she gasped and choked for breath, flushed and hot and lovely. The way she looked like Kira, the way her face reflected all those terrible (wonderful) dreams, the way that Dax could almost remember, if she closed her eyes, just how good her heart tasted; the memory struck hard, but not even that was enough to make her resist now, and where just a moment ago she had wanted to be sick, now all she wanted was more.

It felt so good, even as it felt so terrible. She wanted to hate it, wanted so desperately to remember that it was wrong, but it felt _so good_.

The Intendant smiled, a benevolent god looking down on a foolish mortal, and the strain etched on her face was almost more effective than the grinding of her hips. She could barely breathe, Dax could see, so close to asphyxiation at her hands, and the sight just drove her even closer to the edge. Almost against her will, she bucked upwards, finding friction in the press of the Intendant’s hips and writhing pathetically against it. She felt like she was on fire, desperate and overheated, so turned on that she couldn’t think and so drunk that she couldn’t see; she felt illicit too, and dirty, but it was more than she could do to hold herself still.

A low sound hummed in her ear, approval mixed with pain, and Dax recognised the lust in the Intendant’s voice, a shallow echo of her own. She cried out again, a pleading whimper that somehow managed to sound even more strangled than the Intendant, who actually was being strangled. Salt stung in her mouth, the taste of tears so much more bitter than bloodwine, but she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop the tears and she couldn’t stop the slick slide between their bodies, just as wet and no less bitter. She was too close now. She could feel it. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she fought, she could not stop it.

“Admit it,” the Intendant said again, forcing the words out with obvious effort. “My sweet Trill… my sweet _Jadzia_ … admit that this brings you pleasure.” Her breath was a rattling hiss, and yet Dax heard every word with all the clarity of an alert klaxon.

“No…”

It was practically a plea, but a futile one. Even as she said the words, her body betrayed her; she felt her fingers go tight again around the Intendant’s throat, physical strength rising unwittingly with the heat at her centre, stoked higher still as the Intendant lifted her hips, taking back the friction that Dax needed so badly. In spite of herself, Dax whined at the loss of contact, bucking with more urgency, desperate beyond measure. She couldn’t think, could barely breathe; all she could do was feel, and all she could feel was everything she’d tried so hard not to.

“Oh, yes,” the Intendant coaxed. “You do feel it. You can deny it all you want, but we both know the truth. This brings you pleasure. Having me like this, helpless and choking, suffering under your hands… you feel powerful. You feel excited. You feel _good_.”

“I don’t.” The words were a sob. “I won’t. There’s nothing good in this. There’s nothing good in… in…”

She trailed off, fingers flexing around the Intendant’s neck, and even as she said the words she knew that they weren’t true. It did feel good. The spasms as the Intendant fought for breath, throat pulsing against her fingers, the choked roughness of her voice when she spoke to her, the urgency and desperation and need, so close to the end, so close to the edge, so close, so close, _so close_ …

“Stop denying yourself.” Her voice was little more than a rasp, and another bolt of white-hot desire struck Dax between the legs as she realised once again that she was responsible for that. “Just admit it. You enjoy this.”

Dax closed her eyes, but it didn’t help. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I…”

“But you still do,” the Intendant pressed. “Don’t you?”

She slid a hand down between them, driving her fingers in deep and hard, but Dax was too far gone to even notice. The sight of her face — Kira’s face — sweat-soaked and turning red as she fought for air, the raw intimacy of it, the pulse of every choking gasp as veins throbbed under her fingertips… it was more than she could take.

The sensation alone was more effective than all the rest combined, more effective than the sudden pain-touched pleasure as those slender fingers thrust into her without remorse, more effective than the slick slide and the blissful friction, the pressure of the Intendant’s hips as she brought them back down, the bucking of her own as she rose to meet them. It was more effective than anything she’d ever known, anything she’d ever experienced in eight lifetimes, the pain and the strain on her face, and the knowledge that it was by her hand, that she was the one causing it, that it was all her doing. She was the reason the Intendant couldn’t breathe; she was the reason she was gasping and choking and dying. She was responsible. Her. _Dax_.

The realisation struck her harder and deeper than even the Intendant’s fingers, and a terrible scream tore from deep inside her as she came, squeezing the Intendant’s neck until she was sure it would be crushed.

There it was, she thought. There was the answer, and she certainly couldn’t deny it now. How could she look the Intendant in the eye and tell her that she didn’t take any pleasure in this when she was still shaking with all the evidence to the contrary? How could she convince her that she didn’t feel good, when her body was still tightening and spasming around her fingers, when she was still shuddering and sobbing out her climax? How could she sell the lie when the truth was right there for both of them to see?

Her body had betrayed her, and there wasn’t enough left of her mind to try and fight it.

The Intendant leaned down as Dax’s hands fell limply from her throat. “Pleasure,” she whispered again, still breathless. She moved in to steal an open-mouthed kiss, and this time Dax didn’t even try to resist when her body surged up to welcome it. “Feel it, Jadzia…”

“Yes…” she panted, wretched and broken. “ _Yes_.”


	15. Chapter 15

By the time she got her breath back, the Intendant had already caught hers.

It hardly seemed fair, Dax thought, that she could breathe so freely and easily despite the fingerprints turning to bruises about her neck, while Dax herself was still struggling to keep from blacking out as the ceiling spun above her and her stomach threatened to turn itself inside-out. Still, as quickly as she seemed to have recuperated, there was still a definite hoarseness to the Intendant’s voice when she spoke, and Dax took more vindication than she cared to admit from the way she coughed and spluttered a little before she could get the words out.

“Don’t you feel better now?” she rasped. “Admitting that you enjoyed it? Admitting that it brought you pleasure to indulge that twisted little temper of yours?”

The ceiling seemed to mock her, tilting dizzyingly as she scowled up at it, so Dax closed her eyes and tried to swallow. “No,” she forced out, even as her body hummed its disagreement, pulsing pleasantly under the Intendant’s. “I don’t feel better. I feel worse. I feel… I feel…”

She felt sick, but of course she couldn’t say that. The Intendant would just blame the bloodwine for that, and at least in part she’d probably be right. Dax was finding it hard enough right now to pick apart what she was truly feeling and what was being forced on her by the liquor, or by Joran, or even by both of them. What had she been thinking, imagining that lowered inhibitions would help her at all? It was the last thing she needed, and now with the last vestiges of strength gone from her, her body was quick to remind her that she had a lot more than just Joran to hold down.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll tell me how thoroughly wretched you feel,” the Intendant said, cutting her off somewhat generously. “But you can’t deny that it was freeing… invigorating… intoxicating, even.”

“No,” Dax said again, only fractionally less tremulous. “It wasn’t, and you… you shouldn’t have done that.” She swallowed again, this time with unease, well aware of the danger she faced in challenging the Intendant at all, even in something like this. “You shouldn’t have made me do that.”

Thankfully, the Intendant seemed rather more amused than offended, though when she barked out a laugh there was a sudden roughness to the sound that had nothing to do with the damage Dax had done. “I didn’t make you do anything,” she said when she had composed herself. “That reaction was all yours, my dear.”

Dax groaned. She didn’t want to acknowledge the truth in that, didn’t want to accept that the Intendant was right all along. She could still feel it now, all too vividly, the need and the want and the desire, every nerve alight with urgency, and how much more powerfully she’d felt the rush of pleasure as she—

No.

She couldn’t think about that, couldn’t admit that it was the Intendant’s pain that had pushed her over the edge, couldn’t accept that she was right, that the strain and the suffering and the sweat, the veins pulsing desperately under her vicelike fingers, the rush of power and adrenaline, that all of that had pulled the climax from her. She couldn’t admit that inflicting all that pain really had given her all the pleasure the Intendant had promised — threatened — _promised_.

She couldn’t think about it. She couldn’t.

“Jadzia.”

“Don’t.” It was a plea, not because she lacked the strength to make it anything more, though that was just as true, but because she had learned by now that the Intendant was more reciprocal to desperation than demand. “Please, Intendant. I don’t… I don’t want to.”

The Intendant sighed, deep and heavy and still a little bit raw. “Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug. “But I still think it’s a terrible waste.”

Dax tried to steady her breathing as the Intendant rolled away. Her body was churning, satisfaction mingled with shame to create a heady and entirely unpleasant sensation, and that combined with queasy headache from the bloodwine to make her feel ill. She wanted to close her eyes, to shut out the swerving of the ceiling and the throbbing of her body, but she didn’t want to risk falling asleep and dreaming. Not now. After what they’d just done, she was more frightened than ever of the phantasms that visited her when she slept, and before she even realised she was doing it she found her face pressed against the Intendant’s shoulder, inexplicably seeking some kind of sordid comfort.

“Well, well,” the Intendant murmured, seemingly as surprised by the gesture as Dax herself was. “I have to admit, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be the ‘cuddling’ type…”

“I’m not,” Dax protested, though she didn’t raise her head. “And especially not with you.”

“Careful,” the Intendant warned, a surprisingly forgiving gesture. “You’re still beneath me, even if you’re not under me any more.”

“I’m sorry,” Dax mumbled, because even if she didn’t have the strength to remember who she was, she still knew who Jadzia was, and Jadzia needed her. “I’m sorry, Intendant, I…”

The Intendant’s body shook as she chuckled. “I know,” she said. “I imagine you’re not thinking very clearly at all, are you? Exactly how much did you have to drink?”

“Too much.” She pressed her nose to the Intendant’s skin, breathing in the scent of sweat and blood and sex, of power and control, of so many things that were not Kira. “Not enough.”

“That sounds like the perfect amount,” the Intendant replied lightly. She tilted Dax’s head up, warm lips just touching her own. “I suppose you’re too high and mighty to get some sleep now, aren’t you?” Dax didn’t bother to reply, though she suspected her expression probably said it all. “Ah, yes, your bad dreams. Or good ones, I suppose, depending on how you look at it…”

“I don’t want to look at it,” Dax snapped.

“I’m sure you don’t.” The Intendant rolled her eyes. “You don’t want to do anything, do you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dax muttered, and instantly regretted it.

The Intendant struck her smartly, quick but not particularly hard, a lash across the face that Dax barely felt at all. “I warned you about that,” she said simply, by way of explanation.

“You did,” Dax agreed, and didn’t add that she wished the blow had been harder.

The Intendant studied her for a moment, perhaps seeing all of that, then shrugged and pressed on. “Far be it from me to keep you from your self-destruction, my dear,” she said, “but I can’t help noticing that you’re really just making yourself miserable by trying to deny this inner violence of yours.”

Dax recoiled. “That’s because—”

“Quiet!” Though it was barely above a whisper, it had the desired effect, and Dax shut her mouth as quickly as she’d opened it. “Look at you. Cowering and whimpering and hiding from yourself, so frightened of that beautiful temper. You won’t let yourself take pleasure in it. You won’t let me take pleasure in it. You won’t use it to your advantage by taking a place at my side. And now you won’t even yourself dream about it.” She laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “You can ignore it all you like, my sweet, but it seems quite clear to me that it’s going to find you one way or another. So why not just stop this needless resistance and embrace it?”

“Because I’m not like you.” She took another deep breath, slow and soothing, clinging to the fundamental truth of the words. “And I’m not like him.”

The Intendant snorted, but she didn’t laugh again. “So you keep saying. And the tragedy is, I think you actually believe it.” She shook her head, pulling away and cupping Dax’s chin, leaning in to study her. “Well, I hate to break it to you my dear, but claiming to be on a higher plane of existence than the rest of us doesn’t mean that you really are. You can spout your silly little Trill philosophies at me until we both die of boredom, but it won’t change the fact that inflicting pain gets you off, or that hurting me brought you more pleasure than you’ve felt in years. And you can blame it all you want on some other nobody who had your precious parasite a million years ago, but blaming him won’t stop it happening to you, will it?”

She flicked her tongue over Dax’s cheek, just below her eye. Without thinking, Dax reached out, catching her by the back of her head and pulling her in for another kiss, deep and dizzying.

The Intendant was delighted, amused by the initiative. “You see?” she cooed, licking the words into the roof of Dax’s mouth. “The sooner you accept it, my dear, the sooner we can start having some real fun. So why don’t you do us both a favour and stop acting like all of this is somehow beneath you, when the truth is that you’re just as dirty as the rest of us.”

Dax didn’t answer. What could she say? She hated that the Intendant had grasped it so easily, hated that she could pick apart all of Dax’s defence mechanisms as though they didn’t exist, hated that it all came so damn easily to her, and to everyone else in this forsaken universe. Everything was so twisted here, and everyone was so gorged on violence, even the good guys, that they’d forgotten anything else. Joran would probably find a good home at the Intendant’s side, she thought sadly, and wished she had it in her to feel repulsed.

She supposed she should have anticipated that the Intendant would not be content with her silence, that she would push her to say something even if she couldn’t get her to respond the way she wanted. She should have seen it coming, and yet it still took her somewhat by surprise when she propped herself upright, gazing down at Dax with half-lidded expectation and just the faintest hint of affection.

“So tell me,” she said, and Dax was sure she heard something almost like sympathy behind the rustiness of her voice. “Is this why you need all that benzocyatizine?”

The panic gripped Dax by the throat, as fiercely as she had held the Intendant by hers just a few moments ago, leaving her feeling trapped and helpless. She couldn’t tell the Intendant the truth, of course; that would put Jadzia and her rebel friends in jeopardy, to say nothing of Dax herself. Garak had been right when he’d warned her about that. It would have been dangerous enough if she had confessed the truth as soon as she’d docked, but to leave it this long was suicide. The Intendant was a very proud woman, and if she thought someone had made a fool of her she would punish them far more for that than for any perceived rebellion. No, the lie was safer than the truth, if only marginally, though her blood ran cold to think of what the Intendant would do with her now.

“Yes,” she said at last, hesitant and self-conscious even though she’d thought it through. “Yes, that’s why. I need it to stabilise my… that is…” She stumbled clumsily over the poorly-fabricated explanation, and silently prayed that the Intendant would read it as simply the bi-product of too much alcohol, rather than the hopeless floundering that it really was. “Look, I just need it, okay?”

“No, you don’t.” The Intendant sounded almost disappointed, frustrated that even after so much so-called progress Dax was still trying to delude herself, and the condescending smile fell from her lips as she caressed the side of Dax’s face. “You don’t need it at all, darling. You just want it. You’re scared of your little demons and you want to drug them into submission.”

Even drunk as she was, Dax recognised the time to be submissive, and she bowed her head, turning her face towards the Intendant’s palm. “Something like that,” she admitted with exaggerated softness, then looked up with what she prayed was a hopeful look. “Are you going to keep it from me now?”

The Intendant stared at her, seemingly genuinely perplexed. “Now, why would I do that?” She shook her head. “You’re welcome to do as you like, my dear. It makes no difference to me. Besides, we both know you’d find a way to hijack that shipment as soon as it came in, with or without my blessing, and we can’t have that, can we? Think of what the workers would say…”

Dax actually laughed at that. Not a polite, good-natured chuckle, the weak-willed half-laugh of someone desperately trying to sound respectful when all they wanted to do was rip their companion’s head off, but a loud and uncontrolled explosion of hysterical-sounding laughter that almost choked her. The notion was more tragic than funny, the idea that the Intendant cared more about what her slaves thought of her than whether they survived a day’s work, but delirium had well and truly set in with Dax by now, and she laughed until she couldn’t breathe.

“Are you done?” the Intendant snapped when she gagged on her own saliva and spluttered into silence.

“I’m sorry…” Dax managed, flushed and coughing.

“You will be, if you keep this up,” the Intendant said viciously. “But since you’re clearly inebriated beyond the least bit of sense, I shall let it slide this time.” Still, her fingers dug in deep where they still held the side of Dax’s face, tight but not quite painful. “I don’t know why it amuses you so much that I’d have the basic decency to keep my word. What good would it do me to withhold a cargo I can’t use? And besides…” Her smile turned cold for a moment, and her grip tightened even more. “I intend to collect my payment, so why wouldn’t I supply the goods you’re paying for? I may be ruthless, my dear, but even I play fair.”

Dax had almost forgotten about that, the hurriedly dismissed promise she’d made in the hope of acquiring the drug that her counterpart so desperately needed. She’d been uncomfortable at the time, but in light of what they’d just done and the Intendant’s steadfast determination to twist her into something she didn’t want to be, it felt all the more worrisome. Even the most harmless information could be deadly in the wrong hands, and Dax’s secrets didn’t feel harmless even inside her own head.

“Payment on delivery,” she said, sighing, and forced herself to remember that they had a few days before she needed to worry about it, that there were more immediate problems and this one, at least, could be shunted to the side.

“Well, of course,” the Intendant replied, offended that Dax would feel the need to point that out, apparently not realising that she’d said it far more for her own benefit. “That goes without saying. I’m not a complete monster, you know.”

Dax shifted, feeling the ache between her legs and trying not to stare at the bruises forming on either side of the Intendant’s throat. “That’s debatable,” she muttered before she had a chance to stop herself.

“Be careful with those accusations.” It was a warning. “My fondness for you will only get you so far if you keep that up.”

Dax rolled her eyes, then closed them, not bothering to apologise even as she knew the silence would make the Intendant even more annoyed with her. Part of her realised she should be wary, that the Intendant was no doubt speaking the truth when she warned of her waning patience, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to care. She felt too worn out, sickly and drained, and the pounding in her head was bordering on unbearable. Why couldn’t the Intendant just leave her alone until Jadzia’s medicine arrived? Why couldn’t she just let her rest in peace?

“You’re drunk,” the Intendant observed, somewhat unnecessarily. “And you’re insufferable when you’re drunk. So might I suggest, before you do something you’ll regret, that you sleep it off?”

“You can suggest it all you want,” Dax grumbled sullenly.

“I can make it an order instead, if you prefer.” There was an edge to her voice. “By the Prophets, I’d forgotten how masochistically stubborn you can be.”

The exclamation struck a sharp chord in Dax’s chest, resonating with the part of her heart that still clung to the Kira she knew. More often than either of them could count, Dax’s antics had caused her to throw up her hands and cry out to the Prophets just like that, and hearing those same words on this Kira’s lips now sent a jolt of familiarity through her, a sting of melancholy that hurt deeper than any shallow cuts or bone-deep bruises.

“I didn’t know you believe in the Prophets…” she heard herself mumble, and swiftly regretted it as the Intendant shot her a look that could cut through glass.

“What I believe in is none of your business,” she said. “And trying to distract me from your inexcusable inebriation isn’t going to work either, so you might as well save your breath. I’m not going to waste my precious off-duty hours listening to you complain about how miserable you feel and how you’re never going to drink again, until the next time you do and we go through the whole ridiculous charade all over again. You’d think you would have learned your lesson after the last time, but apparently you Trills aren’t fast learners…”

“The last time?” Dax echoed automatically.

The Intendant made a dissatisfied noise in her throat; it sounded ragged and painful, still hollow with the bruises around her neck, and Dax tried to ignore the buzz of self-satisfaction that hit her square in the gut.

“I’m not surprised you don’t remember,” she remarked coolly. “In fact, I’d be more surprised if you did. Suffice it to say, if I’d thought for one moment you’d go back to that bar, I never would’ve let you dock your silly little ship here in the first place.”

Even as she knew it was Jadzia’s behaviour and not her own, Dax still felt a shameful flush colour her skin. “I’m… sorry?”

“You should be,” the Intendant said. “If you must insist on feeling ashamed of yourself, by all means be ashamed of that.”

Not for the first time, Dax was struck by how much she sounded like Kira. Her Kira, the Kira who would throw up her hands and cry out to the Prophets every time Dax did or said something stupid, the Kira who understood why she hated the violence inside of her, the Kira who had lived that same violence and come out the other side, the Kira who had felt the same way. Her Kira, capable of all the terrible things that this Kira did but without any of her relish. She missed her, she realised, and the melancholy deepened.

She willed herself to block it out, to banish that Kira from her mind entirely, but then the Intendant pressed a gentle palm against her cheek, and it fit just like Kira’s would, just like Kira’s _did_ , on those rare occasions when Dax was the one who needed solace and Kira was the one who could provide it, when their typical roles were reversed if only for a moment or two. It hurt all over again, and she let her eyes drift closed, lids fluttering with painful nostalgia.

“I’m not tired,” she insisted, clinging wilfully to her trademark stubbornness, using it to drive away her illicit memories. “And I’m not so drunk that I need to sleep it off. I’m perfectly fine, thank you.”

“Of course you are,” the Intendant patronised. “But be that as it may, you’re in my bed, in my quarters, on my station, and you will do as I say.”

Though she knew it was hopeless, Dax struggled to fight back. She couldn’t fight anything else, couldn’t fight who she was or how she felt, couldn’t fight the pleasure that rose in her as she screamed out her pleasure through the Intendant’s pain, couldn’t fight the rush of adrenaline and desire, the heat between her thighs as she felt the breath choking and rattling beneath her fingers. She couldn’t fight any of that, couldn’t fight the things that frightened her… but even if it killed her, she would fight the need for sleep.

“No.” The word came out like a whimper, so she braced herself against the sheets and tried again. “I don’t need…”

“Quiet.” It was a command, soft and sweet but unmistakeable just the same. “Sobriety now. Whining later.”

Dax gritted her teeth, jaw clenched until it hurt. “No.”

Leaning over her, the Intendant breathed an almost-tender sigh. Dax imagined that the honest affection in the sound belonged to her Kira, imagined that the gentle palm against her cheek was Kira’s as well, and that the warm the body still pressed against her was hers. She imagined that it was Kira holding her close, Kira telling her to rest, Kira insisting that she sleep off the bloodwine before she made a fool out of herself, Kira promising to protect her from those terrible dreams. _Kira…_

“No,” she said again, but her resolve was cracking almost as sharply as her voice.

She could fight the Intendant, could fight authority and command and the order to rest, but she could not fight Kira. She’d never been able to fight Kira. Even now, even knowing as she did how much rested on her being able to fight something, she felt herself slipping, felt the world drifting and faltering around her. She tried to sit up and look the Intendant in the eye, to see beyond all doubt that she was not Kira, to see the evil of this place etched on her familiar features, but the room tilted so hard that she couldn’t see anything at all.

Dimly, she remembered a shuttle accident. Flashes of broken bones, of blood and pain and fear, but they were gone almost before they could manifest, supplanted by a swirling starscape, motion sickness and the lurching of imminent doom, the surface of a planet rushing up to meet her. Spinning, swerving, slipping, discordant and dizzy, and was it any wonder she couldn’t see anything?

“No…”

There was no fight left in the word, or in the rest of her. Her eyes were already rolling back, vision blurring and turning dark, giving in, and all the fighting in the world couldn’t stop it from happening. She was doomed, falling, losing consciousness and losing herself, and all she could think of as her muscles went slack was that at least she’d tried. For as long as she could, she had fought. She had struggled and resisted, and she had fought with everything she had. If nothing else, surely Kira would respect her for that. Surely she would… surely…

Above her, around her, all over her, the Intendant vibrated with laughter, sharp lines and soft edges, threats and promises and _‘goodnight, my sweet Trill’_ , a threat and a promise, beauty and danger, Bajor and Terok Nor.

 _Kira,_ Dax thought and wished that she was.

*

_The sand was made of bones._

_Bleached and abandoned, turned to dust under the blazing sun, it was still sharp enough to cut, and it did so without mercy. The horizon was pale and featureless, coloured only by the trail of bloody footprints that mapped out Dax’s serpentine path, countless miles spread out like lifetimes behind her._

_Not all of them, though. So many, yes, but not all. Countless lifetimes come and gone, dead and buried, their bones all turned to sand… countless lives lost and mourned and forgotten, but not him. Never him. It didn’t matter how hard she tried or how far she walked, he wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t join the others in the sand, wouldn’t turn to dust and blood and ground-up bones under her feet, wouldn’t become a memory lost to time and distance and forever. He wouldn’t leave. No matter where she went, he would always be there._

_He walked beside her, but the jagged edges of the shifting sands didn’t cut his feet like they did hers. He made no footprints and cast no shadow; he left no evidence of his presence at all. In a hundred years, when future nobodies retraced the path of her journey, they wouldn’t know that he walked by her side, that he shared every step, that he went everywhere she did. They wouldn’t even know he had existed at all._

_But she knew. He made sure of that, and no matter how hard she tried to block him out, he would not be silenced._

_She had lost count of the hours, days, weeks, lifetimes that she’d spent out here. The horizons looked the same whichever way she turned; the only difference was the trail of footprints to mark where she had been. She was thankful for the blood on her feet, the burned-in scratches carved by bones turned to sand, still sharp no matter how fiercely the wind tried to blow them smooth. Even the dead had teeth, after all, and Dax suffered their bite again and again with every step she took._

_“You’ll have to give up some time.” He said the same thing every time she took a step, every time the sand cut into her feet, every time she bit her lip to keep from crying out. “You know you can’t keep going forever.”_

_“I’ll keep going as long as it takes.” She said the same thing every time, too. “I’m not like you. I don’t need to give up. I won’t ever need to.”_

_“Maybe not,” he shrugged. “But you want to, don’t you?” She didn’t need to look at him to know what she would find, the anticipation on his face, the excitement lighting up like a signal fire, warning and celebration all at once. “All this time… no food, no water… nothing but this…” He gestured, taking in the vastness of the desert, the bones turned to sand, the footprints made of blood, the sweat beading on her brow. “You can taste it.”_

_She licked her lips, salt stinging in cracks that had long since bled dry, and sucked down an airless breath. “I don’t care,” she told him, parched and dizzy. “I won’t do what you want me to. I won’t be like you. I’d sooner let them take me.”_

_“And they will,” he reminded her. “You know they will. You’ve come too far and done too much, and you know they’ll catch up with you in the end.” He laughed, and she hated that he didn’t sound parched at all. “What do you expect will happen when they do? Do you really think they’ll show you mercy just because you’re sorry? Do you really think you deserve it?”_

_“I know I don’t,” she replied softly. “And I don’t want it.”_

_She braced herself and took another blood-soaked step forwards. He shook his head and followed._

_Neither of them spoke for a very long time; the only sound to punctuate the silence was the occasional hiss choked out through gritted teeth as the pain in her feet intensified and the impatient cawing of carrion birds circling in the blood-red sky above. She didn’t expect him to leave her alone, and he didn’t, but he seemed content to shadow her quietly for a while and leave her to the ravening of her thoughts._

_Maybe he thought it would be more effective if he didn’t keep talking. Maybe he thought she would give herself over to him if he just gave her some room. And maybe he was right; the self-doubt alone was crippling enough, to say nothing of the hunger gnawing in her belly and the thirst tearing at her throat. Experience would be the better teacher, he was right about that, and he let it do its job without any further help._

_For her part, Dax was just grateful that he’d shut up for a second._

_He held his tongue until she crested a particularly difficult sand dune, lost her footing, and fell awkwardly down the other side, coming to rest face-first in the sand. She tried not to think of all the dead that had made the dune as she pulled herself out and struggled to find her bearings again. Were these all the bones of people she had killed, or were some of them his? How could she tell, and would it matter even if she did? Hadn’t she told an old friend once that the sins of a past host would bear down on the shoulders of every host that came after? Weren’t his sins hers too, by default?_

_If she let herself dwell on that for more than a moment, though, she would taste the decay on her tongue, the slaughter and suffering, and she would be bent double before she knew what had hit her, losing what precious little she still had inside of her. She could not afford that any more, and so she refused to let herself wonder._

_“How does it taste?” he asked when she righted herself, sensing the direction of her thoughts just as he always did._

_Dax spat into the sand, closed her eyes and her mind. “Like dishonour,” she said._

_For a moment, she glimpsed a hazy silhouette on the horizon, a familiar shape that felt like home. It was a only fraction of a second, though, and then it was gone, vanished almost before she had a chance to capture the memory of its face, its name, its identity. Curzon, she thought, the word echoing hollowly in her aching head, and for just one blissful second she smiled._

_Joran waved a hand, dismissing the phantom entirely and wiping it from her thoughts as though it had never existed at all. “Dishonour,” he mocked. “What do you know of dishonour, little girl? You’ve killed and slaughtered just like me, and worse besides.” He shook his head, impressed and derisive in equal measure. “You know, not even I would kill my best friend.”_

_“Yes, you would,” she shot back, as evenly as she could when her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. “You’d kill all your friends if you had any. But you don’t. You never did, and now you never will.”_

_He conceded that with a chuckle, unaffected and unoffended. “Demonise me all you like,” he shrugged. “It won’t change the things you did.”_

_“I’m not trying to change them,” she said, and lurched back to her feet. She had a lot further to go yet, and she wasn’t getting anywhere by sitting still and letting him bait her. “I’m just trying to get out of this hellhole. You can come with me if you want. Or stay here and rot away until you’re as dead as they are. I don’t care. But either way, I’m leaving.”_

_And she did. The desert continued forever, she knew that now beyond all doubt, and so she would as well._

_It wasn’t easy, but then she didn’t deserve anything easy. Joran was right about one thing: she could not justify the things she’d done by blaming him. His deeds were his, but hers were hers as well, and they both weighed just as heavily on the symbiont swimming in her stomach. She could feel it suffering within her, upset and angry, betrayed by the very people who were supposed to be its protectors; she wondered what it would say if it could talk, and whether it would be more angry at him for putting all those awful thoughts inside her head, or at her for turning those thoughts into action._

_Her deeds were her own. This mess was hers too. He was here in presence only; he couldn’t be blamed for what her hands and teeth had done._

_The sun was hot, and the sand was sharp at her feet. She thought about stopping, bending over and taking a look at the damage, seeing how badly the bones had cut her soles, but she laughed off the idea and refused to indulge it. What good would it do, after all? She was a thousand light-years away from the nearest field bandage, and a thousand more from the nearest pair of sturdy shoes. Even if her feet were torn to shreds, ripped apart by the last decaying vestiges of all the lives she’d taken, what could she do about it?_

_There was no help for her here, and even if there was, she didn’t deserve it. He was right about that: she didn’t deserve anything._

_On the horizon, she saw a shadow. Not a figure this time, not a body or a soul. A shimmering surface, like a pool of water, enticing and inviting. She wondered if she was hallucinating, if she had been out here for too long, aimless and nameless and parched, lost to the delirious murmuring thrall of her own tortured thoughts and the memory of Bajoran screams. She had hallucinated so much, after all; how hard would it be to conjure a tempting vision of water, only to have it crumble to dust when she reached it?_

_“It would be fair,” he told her, as helpful as ever, reading her mind once more. “You don’t deserve water. Neither of us do.” He laughed, maniacal and hypnotic, and she let the rhythm of it pass through her like the endless beating of the sun above. “But then, I’m already dead, aren’t I? What do I care about things like water?”_

_Dax didn’t know, and she didn’t care. She didn’t even really care if she was hallucinating. So what if the pool turned to dust when she reached it? At least she would get there. She had something to strive for now, a goal to look towards; even if it amounted to nothing, Dax knew from repeated experience that there was a vast reserve of inner strength to be found in hope, and imaginary hope was better than no hope at all. Even if there was nothing to be found but dust and shattered dreams, then at least they would be fuel enough to drive her there in the first place._

_There were worse things than chasing phantasms, she thought; until now, she hadn’t been chasing anything, struggling just to put one foot in front of the other, to keep marching through the pain in her feet, to keep moving past the clamour in her head. She was the one being chased, she knew, but she couldn’t remember who was chasing her; all she’d known for longer than she could remember was that she was guilty, and when they reached her at last she would be punished._

_And so she stumbled onwards, pushing his words to the back of her mind like she did everything else he said. He wanted her to die out here, she knew; he wanted them both to die. He didn’t know how to feel guilty, how to feel shame or responsibility or any of the things that kept her separate from him. He didn’t hear the screams and the pleas of his victims every time the silence fell, and he didn’t care whose bones had made the sand beneath his feet. He didn’t care about anything; he was already dead, and all he wanted was for her to die too. What an achievement that would be! Anyone could kill a man sitting helplessly bound in a chair, but who else could claim to have killed from beyond the grave?_

_Dax wouldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t have more blood on her hands, even if it would be her own this time. If he wanted her dead, he would have to do the task himself, and they both knew that wasn’t possible. A dead man could talk, and he did that loudly enough to wake the corpses in the sand beneath them, but for all his noise he couldn’t lift a phaser or a knife, or even his own fist. If she was going to die, it wouldn’t be by his hand, but by his mind. And, at least for now, hers was stronger._

_Just like before, she lost track of time. It could have been hours before she reached the pool, or it could have been days; all she knew was that she’d made it and she was still alive, and for one breathtaking moment that was all she needed to know._

_He had been whispering in her ear the whole time, telling her to give up, to roll over and let the carrion birds take her before her pursuers had the chance to, and it had been so tempting to listen to him, to give up and let go, to roll over and let death claim her, to hell with surviving and to hell with penance. But she didn’t. She didn’t, because she saw the pool in the distance growing ever closer, because she would not give him the satisfaction of watching her surrender… and because she had faith._

_Then at long last, she reached it, falling to her knees and letting out a sob that was mostly dust. She had made it. She was alive, and she had made it. But the triumphant shout that cut through the heat-thick air was not hers, but his._

_“Blood,” she whispered, crestfallen._

_He smiled. “What did you expect?”_

_Dax didn’t have an answer to that. It made sense, she supposed; they were walking on the bones of the dead, breathing air choked with decay; everything in this place was dead and rotted, so why wouldn’t the water be the same?_

_It shouldn’t have sickened her like it did. She knew that. She had feasted on far worse than blood, fed on the flesh of her victims almost before they’d drawn their final breaths, ripped out their hearts and devoured them whole, dishonour spiced with shame. She could still remember how Kira’s tasted, bitter and sweet, so much like a betrayal, but so delicious. It had gone down easily enough, and here in this starved and wasted place she found her mouth watering at the memory. She had drank blood before, willingly and eagerly, so why was this suddenly so different?_

_“Because you feel guilty,” he said._

_He made it sound so shameful, so silly. After all the pain she’d inflicted, the lives she’d taken and the blood she’d spilled, he made it sound as though the very worst part was that she felt bad about it. A part of her couldn’t help thinking he might be right about that; after all, where was that guilt when she was ripping Kira’s chest open, cracking her ribs between her fingers, tearing out her heart and swallowing it piece by piece? Where was the remorse when she was teaching Jadzia how to inflict pain, how to hurt and kill, how to become like her? Where was the shame and the sorrow when it mattered? What good was it now the deeds were all done?_

_Blood. It spread out as far as the horizon, wet and sticky and enticing. It was the only sustenance she had seen for as long as she’d been here, the only chance of salvation in this endless wasteland of death. Even without him standing beside her to remind her of the fact, she knew that it was her only hope, that drinking was the only way she would survive, and she hated it. An open wound carved into the ground beneath her feet, but it was not her doing this time. There was no guilt here, no shame, no remorse; there was nothing here at all, just blood, and all she had to do was drink it down._

_But she couldn’t. Not now, not any more. She’d drank her fill of blood, eaten her fill of hearts and flesh. Though she was starved and dying, her stomach wouldn’t take any more. Blood was life, but in her hands it turned to death and destruction, just like the bones beneath her feet. It might be flowing free and full of promise now, but once she took it inside herself, it would turn to poison. It had happened before, life and hope turned to sickness and pain as she tried to swallow it, and she would not let it happen again here._

_No more. She had to stop. She had to end it._

_“Drink,” he said. “You know you have to.”_

_“No, I don’t.” She shut her eyes tight, tried to block out his voice, but of course he was inside her and she could no more quiet him with blindness than she could stop her heart from beating by wishing it dead. “I don’t have to do anything.”_

_“You’ll die if you don’t,” he reminded her, gleefully malicious. “Is that what you want? To die out here? With me?”_

_It was what he wanted, she knew, and that meant there was a part of her that wanted it too. For all that she tried to forget it, he was still a part of her, and his desires were hers as well. She couldn’t blame him for that, as much as she wanted to, but it helped to explain the unjustifiable darkness inside of her, the black hole growing wider and wider with every life she took, every heart she ate, every drop of blood she drank. It helped to know that the urge to die was his as well, triumph shrouded in surrender, even as there was still a tiny sliver of nobility, Curzon and the others, that wanted to die simply because it was better than killing._

_“I’m not going to drink,” she told him. “I won’t.”_

_“But you want to…” he coaxed, in a voice that reminded her of someone she used to love. “Do you think I can’t see the way you’re trembling? Do you think I can’t feel how desperate you are? You’re thirsty, aren’t you?”_

_She was. That was the worst part. A part of her had felt relieved when she saw the lake was made of blood instead of water; it was the same part that had craved more of stuff almost as soon as she left the carnage all those lifetimes ago, three chests torn open and three hearts laid to waste, the same part that always wanted more, no matter how gorged she got. Killing wasn’t enough any more; that was a lesson she had learned well. It wasn’t enough simply to feed; she had to keep feeding. Once the appetite was awake in her, it would never be satisfied._

_That was his legacy. That was what he had passed on to her. Where the others had given her great gifts — honour, exuberance, compassion, ambition, patience, diligence — he had given her this. Hunger, thirst, bloodlust. Endless and insatiable. He had given her death and decay and destruction, and was it any surprise that she’d lost so much precious time in this place, this desert of the dead with sand made from bones and lakes made from blood? Was it any wonder she was doomed to live out the rest of her life here, or else die right now, starved and thirsty? It was all he’d ever wanted, after all._

_“The choice is yours,” he said. “Drink or die.”_

*

“Oh, stop being so melodramatic.”

Dax blinked, regretting it instantly, and groaned as pain shot through her head, blinding and intense. For a long moment, she couldn’t remember where she was or what had happened. She remembered sand made of bones, water made of blood, death and hunger and thirst, but when she tried to focus her bleary eyes on her surroundings, she didn’t see any of those things. She saw walls, sheets, flashes of colours that didn’t seem to belong to anything in particular. She saw a bedroom she didn’t recognise, a ceiling that wasn’t hers, and—

_Kira._

It all came flooding back to her. The mirror universe, Jadzia and her benzocyatizine, the Intendant and her countless perversions, more bloodwine than she had ever seen in her life. She was in bed, she realised, mouth tasting of stale liquor and the threat of acid and bile, and her head pounding so hard she was sure it would explode if she even thought of moving. The woman leaning over her, eyes shining with amusement and disgust, was not Kira, and the realisation slapped just a fragment of sense back into Dax’s foggy brain.

“What…?” she managed.

The Intendant huffed an impatient sigh. “It’s a hangover, dear… and a well-deserved one, at that. I’d hardly say you’re _dying_.”

“Did I say I was?” Dax asked hazily. She couldn’t remember. She could barely remember anything at all.

“Over and over,” the Intendant replied. “It got dull.”

“I…” Dax grimaced. Her head throbbed again as she closed her eyes, lending its support to the Intendant’s claim. “Sorry. Uh… I think… I think I was…”

“…dreaming,” the Intendant finished, rolling her eyes. “Yes, yes. I’m sure you were. You were out for long enough.”

As she spoke, Dax tried to sit up. Her head felt as though it were readying to split in half, and her stomach was sour and fragile, either one threatening to overpower her and neither offering to be the least bit kind about it. It wasn’t the first time she’d found herself in this state since being joined (no doubt it wouldn’t be the last, either, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it), and she cursed Curzon’s name now just as she did the last time, and the time before that.

“You really are very good at that,” the Intendant remarked as Dax groaned and cradled her head.

“What?” she mumbled again.

“Blaming your former hosts for your own personal shortcomings,” the Intendant elucidated, and Dax let out another sickly moan as she realised that she must have uttered the curse out loud.

“I wasn’t blaming him,” she protested futilely. “Well, not exactly, anyway. I was just… it was… well, if he didn’t like bloodwine so damn much…”

“Oh, I’m sure you’d be a paragon of good behaviour,” the Intendant deadpanned. “Without him, without the other one, without this one or that one, you’d be a shining example of Trill society, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Dax muttered.

“I would. If you had it your way, you’d never have any kind of fun. It’s this one’s fault that you have a bad temper, and that one’s fault that you drink too much, and another one’s fault that your dreams aren’t to your liking. Forgive the impertinence, my sweet, but didn’t you ask for this?”

Dax scowled, falling back onto the pillow and wishing the softness would smother her headache. “That’s not the point.”

“I think it’s exactly the point,” the Intendant pressed, taking a sadistic amount of pleasure in making Dax even more uncomfortable than she already was. “Now, I confess that I’m no expert in you Trills and your strange little ways… but unless I’m mistaken, don’t you host creatures put yourself through extensive and rigorous training for even just the slimmest chance of being joined to one of those parasites?” Dax nodded, not bothering to correct her for ‘parasite’, and the Intendant pressed on with gleeful malice. “And yet, for as long as I’ve known you, all you’ve ever done is complain about it.”

Dax covered her face with her hands, as much to block out the light from the ceiling as out of frustration. “It’s not that simple,” she explained wearily. “I can’t count how many times Curzon blamed Audrid for the way he used to coo over Jake—”

She cut herself off quickly, remembering where she was and how different this universe was to her own; even if there was a Jake Sisko out there somewhere, she rather doubted that her counterpart would have known him as a baby. Whatever relationship existed between this universe’s Jadzia Dax and Benjamin Sisko, she could tell quite readily that it had nothing to do with Curzon. The decades of affection that she shared with her Benjamin were notably absent when she looked at Jadzia, and for all their apparent enthusiasm in the bedroom, she could tell that very little of it lingered once they put their clothes back on.

“Anyway,” she coughed awkwardly. “My point is, it’s not just me. I’m not the only Trill to have disagreements with past hosts.”

“Maybe not,” the Intendant replied with a smile. “But you’re certainly the most dramatic one I’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with.”

In hindsight, Dax supposed her indignant outburst of “I am _not_!” would have been rather more effective if it hadn’t been followed almost immediately by a queasy moan and a pitiful plea to the heavens to put her out of her alcohol-induced misery. As it was, she couldn’t even summon the strength to be offended when the Intendant barked a shrill and painful laugh, clapping her all too roughly on the shoulder, and shaking her head as though this was the most hilarious thing she’d ever seen.

“Of course you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Dax whined again. “I’m just a little…” She closed her eyes as her body reminded her of its discomfort, feeling the colour drain from her already sickly skin, and tried to swallow. “…unwell.”

“Unwell,” the Intendant echoed derisively. “You’re hung over, you silly little thing. Blame your precious parasite all you want, but don’t you dare try to pretend you didn’t bring it all on yourself.” She prised Dax’s hands away from her face and smiled cheerfully down at her, ignoring her whimpering protestations. “Now, now. Suck it up and take it like a man.”

“But I’m not a man,” Dax argued, then, when the Intendant shot her another wry look, “Well, not right now, anyway.”

The Intendant rolled her eyes, highly entertained and not afraid to show it. “What am I going to do with you?”

It wasn’t the first time she’d asked the question, but Dax was too miserable to think of a compelling answer; she just moaned again and pressed her face into the pillow, willing it to smother her before she could suffer any further at the hands of Curzon and his over-indulgence.

“I suppose I could offer to fetch you some water,” the Intendant mused out loud, voice dripping with over-eager benevolence. “But that’s what slaves are for.”

“I can get it myself,” Dax insisted, and staggered dizzily to her feet to prove the point.

That, of course, was a grievous mistake. Her legs almost gave out under her weight, and turning her body upright only served to heighten the unpleasantness churning inside her. She bent double, clutching her head as the skull-splitting headache intensified, and breathed slowly through her nose to keep from retching as the roiling of her stomach followed suit. From where she sat, easy and comfortable on the bed, the Intendant was still laughing like this was the most fun she’d had in all her life; Dax was more than a little offended, but she was feeling so sorry for herself, so helpless and pathetic and hopelessly sick, that she couldn’t even muster the fortitude to glare.

“Are you sure?” the Intendant asked, in the most exaggeratedly saccharine voice Dax had ever heard. “You look a little… _unwell_.”

Dax growled, but forced herself to ignore her. She had bigger things to worry about than the Intendant’s cutting sense of humour, namely her precarious state of health. She took a couple of deep steadying breaths, willing her stomach to settle at the very least. The headache, she could handle, but she was fairly sure that she’d never be able to salvage any shred of dignity at all if she lost her last meal all over the Intendant’s pristine carpet. She would never hear the end of it if she let that happen, and that was reason enough to cling to what meagre self-control she still had left.

Maybe she’d never be able to control the violence, or the vicious temper that Joran had brought out in her. Maybe she’d never quite be able to keep the excitement at bay whenever the bloodlust rose up to claim her. Maybe she would be doomed to spend the rest of her life struggling against parts of herself that felt twisted and wrong. Maybe she’d never be able to fight the Intendant either, for as long as she looked like Kira and sounded like Kira and made her think of Kira. Maybe all of that was true. But even if it was, she was still Dax, and even if she couldn’t control anything else inside of her, she could damn well control this. And she would.

“I’m fine,” she said fiercely, talking to them both. “I’m just fine.”

“Suit yourself,” the Intendant shrugged; she still looked amused, though it was quickly fading in deference to worry over her precious carpet. “I was only trying to help.”

“Oh?” Dax snorted, not believing that for a second. “Well, I don’t need your help.”

She thought of Curzon, then, and of Joran. She thought of all the previous Dax hosts together, all trying their hardest to ‘help’, to make her into something new, something better, something more than who she was. She thought of herself as well, of Jadzia, that silly little girl who had fought so hard for all her life just to be taken seriously, who had worked her way through the initiate program not once but twice, wanting so badly to be joined, so desperate to make herself something more than the sum of her own foolish ambition.

What happened to that little girl?, she wondered. Where was that hopeful young initiate who had wanted to lend her voice to the legacy of a symbiont? Where was that determined young woman who would have given anything to prove her worth to those self-righteous bastards at the Symbiosis Commission, those self-righteous bastards who dared wash her out? Where was the Jadzia she used to be?

Gone, she knew. Gone, and replaced by a new Jadzia, a Jadzia who had taken the name ‘Dax’, a Jadzia who had accepted that she wouldn’t be her old self any more, who had signed her existence away to become part of something else, a Jadzia who had taken what those hosts had offered, who had let them shape her into that strange new thing. She missed that other Jadzia, the little girl, that brave and optimistic young woman, that intelligent soul who understood what it meant to be joined, who had read all the material a thousand times and knew the risk and the reward, the danger and the potential, who knew everything and imagined she knew even more than that.

She wasn’t supposed to handle this alone, she realised. She wasn’t supposed to turn down an offer of help. Not from the Intendant, and definitely not from her past hosts. Maybe getting flat-out drunk on someone else’s bar tab wasn’t Curzon’s brightest idea, but then, what did she expect? He was no more sure of how to deal with this situation than Jadzia was, but at least he was trying. At least he was doing something more than trying to block out the memories he didn’t like. He would never turn away from something just because it scared him. Not Curzon Dax, oh no. He’d get drunk, then he’d charge at it with everything he had inside him.

That was what Jadzia had to do as well. And maybe he really had been trying to help when he’d suggested she go to the bar and drink her own weight in bloodwine. How was he to know that what worked for him wouldn’t work for her? It was her place to know those things, wasn’t it? Hers, not his. Curzon didn’t know the little girl Jadzia; only she did. And she was the one who should have known better.

The Intendant was right about that, at least, and so was the Joran in her dreams, the Joran who told her to drink or die. She couldn’t ignore the violence inside of her forever; she couldn’t turn away from the hatred or the anger or any of those terrible things. She couldn’t hide for the rest of her life, not when the thing she was hiding from was inside her, not when it was a part of her. She couldn’t. And, far more than that, she was slowly coming to realise that she _shouldn’t_. It would drive her mad if she did. Worse, it would kill her. She had taken Joran into herself, had embraced his memories and his personality and everything else he’d brought with him. She had accepted all of that, and it was her responsibility to learn how to handle it.

_Drink or die._

Well, she thought wryly. At least she had the ‘drinking’ part down.


	16. Chapter 16

Where she expected to find a replicator, there was only a wall.

For a long moment, all she could do was stare blankly at the empty space, trying to figure out where the replicator could possibly have disappeared to. It took a ridiculously long time for her brain to catch up with her worn-down body and remember that this wasn’t the Deep Space Nine she was used to. This place was not her home, and this was a whole new Terok Nor, so why should she expect to find a replicator anywhere at all?

“What are you doing?” the Intendant demanded from across the room, still lounging lazily in bed; Dax ventured a glance at her, and found her brows knitted with derision. “Surely your brains aren’t that badly scrambled?”

“They’re not scrambled at all,” Dax huffed, but she braced her arms against the wall just the same, steadying to resist the flood of sensation in her head and in her guts. “They’re just a little… disoriented.” She took a few deep breaths to make sure that at least her stomach was under some kind of control, if not her pounding skull, then fixed the Intendant with a cynicism to match her own. “I’ll bet you’ve never had a hangover in your life.”

“Actually, I haven’t.” She sounded so damn proud of that; if she’d had the strength, Dax would have slapped her for it and not even bothered to feel guilty.

“I hate you,” she grumbled instead, perfectly aware of the fact that she was risking her life by voicing dissent.

“No, you don’t,” the Intendant said dryly. “If you did, I would have had you executed long before now.” She smiled, that regal benevolence that Dax loathed so much. “Don’t ever mistake envy for hatred, my sweet little Trill.”

Dax thought about that, or tried to, though her head spun and throbbed and made any kind of thinking difficult. The words were sharp, though, and managed to cut through just enough of the maelstrom inside her to ring out with something that sounded a little like truth.

Before Joran, Dax had never truly known hatred, and so it had been easy to throw out claims of it without really meaning them. _‘I hate you’_ , hurled furiously across a tongo table when Quark countered a great move with an even better one, or _‘I think Benjamin hates us’_ muttered in a sullen aside to Chief O’Brien after they caught sight of particularly unpleasant duty roster.

It wasn’t so easy now. Hate wasn’t an idle threat or a mindless exaggeration any more; suddenly, it carried very real weight. It meant something, and that made it real. Suddenly, hate was exactly what it said it was: _hate_ , dark and dangerous and not something to be thrown around lightly. Dax had almost let herself forget that, and it made her feel even more ill than the hangover to realise that she had needed the Intendant to remind her.

Before she even realised what was happening, she found herself pushing away from the wall and staring back at the Intendant, eyes narrowed as she fought to focus them. “That’s good advice…” she mumbled.

“I know it is,” the Intendant replied, not nearly as good-natured as she tried to sound. “And you needn’t look so shocked about it. I am capable of such things. Contrary to what you might like to believe, my dear, I don’t speak simply for my own benefit.”

“No.” Discomfort soured Dax’s temper. “You speak because you love the sound of your own voice.”

The Intendant laughed, as unoffended as she always was, no matter how crudely Dax talked to her. “Well, I suppose there’s that as well. I’m sure you’ll agree, it does have a certain seductive quality to it. But there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the sound of your own voice as long as what you say is still worthwhile.” She smiled, and Dax allowed her eyes to lose focus just enough to imagine that it was sincere. “And even you can’t deny that I am that.”

“What?” Dax frowned, made dumb and slow by her hangover.

“Worthwhile,” the Intendant said patiently, and her smile turned to molten desire. “In every capacity.”

Dax winced, shame flushing her wan pallor. “Oh… uh…”

“Be careful how you answer,” the Intendant warned her, teasing but not without danger. “I’m a sensitive soul, as you well know. You might hurt my poor feelings.”

“I doubt that,” Dax shot back, unable to help herself. “You don’t have any.”

Still, she was careful, though it was far more for her own benefit than for the Intendant’s. She felt woefully unwell, the unpleasant effects of her hangover clashing noisily with the part of her psyche that suddenly wanted to step back and let herself think of Joran, for the first time, as Dax. She felt unsteady, and not just on her feet; she felt a little like she had turned a corner only to find herself staring down a dark alley, like she’d set a wild animal free only to have it turn back on her with sharp teeth and sharper claws, braced and ready to attack if she put so much as a foot out of place. She felt awful in every way, and the last thing she needed was to have to deal with the Intendant too.

For a long moment, she didn’t say anything at all. She knew it would serve her well to indulge the Intendant and her oversized ego, to stroke and flatter her in the vain hope that she would think again and offer to find her some water. Her throat was dry and her mouth tasted of stale bloodwine and half-dried blood, either one sickening enough at the best of times and even more so together, soaked up and swallowed down by the symbiont before the host body had a chance to even try and metabolise it.

That was another not-so-pleasant side-effect of being joined, she had learned (much to her peril), and one that they conveniently skipped over during initiate training. Until Curzon Dax, she supposed there wasn’t much of a need to warn potential hosts about the dangers of alcohol consumption with a symbiont inside you. Initiates were reserved and intelligent by nature, dedicated over-achievers with more important things on their minds than where to get their next drink; if it hadn’t been for Curzon and his taste for the stuff, Jadzia Dax would probably never have learned about that particular downfall. Frankly, sometimes she still wished that she hadn’t.

The Intendant was still looked at her, expectant, and Dax opted in the end for a coquettish half-shrug. “I suppose you are,” she said, though in truth she had all but forgotten the question.

“I’m glad you agree,” the Intendant smirked, sliding off the bed and crossing the room with her usual effortlessness. “Now, about that water…”

There was no mistaking that the gesture was a reward, another token for being a well-behaved little bedmate, but Dax was beyond caring. She was thirsty and she felt sick and her head was clearly siding with Joran in his efforts to kill her slowly and torturously, and at that point she would have done almost anything if only it would make her feel the least little bit better.

The Intendant moved with her usual grace and poise; Dax was simultaneously impressed and annoyed, envious and awestruck at the same time. Whatever she might think of the Intendant, she held herself in a way that commanded attention, and Dax was unwitting but entirely rapt as she watched her.

She stopped on the far side of the room, hovering thoughtfully over a device that looked embarrassingly like the replicator Dax had been looking for, though Dax sullenly decided that it wasn’t her fault she’d missed it. It was probably the most inappropriate placement for a replicator she had ever seen, and she didn’t bother to mask her moody scowl as the Intendant smiled and leaned in to demand a glass of water. She even talked to the replicators like they were servants at her heel, Dax noted, and tried to cover over her amusement with a pained grimace.

Taking her time and clearly relishing the power, the Intendant brought the water back to Dax’s side, expression hard as she handed it over. “I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, you know,” she told her.

Dax didn’t need to be familiar with this universe, or this Terok Nor, to know that she was telling the truth about that, and she bowed her head in acknowledgement. “Your generosity is most thoughtful, Intendant.”

“I know,” she said flatly. “And to be perfectly honest, my dear, you really don’t deserve it.”

Well, she couldn’t exactly argue with that, could she? And so she didn’t, turning her attention instead to the cool water, safe and delicious. 

She forced herself to sip slowly, taking small little mouthfuls to settle her stomach instead of gulping it down in a single desperate swallow like her instincts wanted. She briefly thought about asking for a raktajino as well, remembering all too well how Curzon would swear by the strong Klingon coffee to get him through his near-daily hangovers, but a quick glance at the look on the Intendant’s face told her not to push her luck; it was enough of a gift that she’d been granted anything at all, and even a refill was more than she could hope for. Dax knew better by now than to try the Intendant’s patience, and all the more so when she was feeling uncharacteristically charitable, and so she kept her eyes carefully downcast as she drained the glass dry.

Though the water didn’t do much to ease the kick-drum pounding in her head, it at least went some way to countering the nausea, and by the time she’d finished, she was starting to feel a little more like herself. Well, a little less fragile, anyway, and the sly smile on the Intendant’s face as she watched her said that she could see the shift in her as well. From the look on her face, eager and wanton, she was already planning their next sordid little adventure, and Dax made a show of covering up the relief on her face as her insides stopped bubbling. For once, she suspected it would be safer to appear weak; after all, not even the Intendant could tear someone down if they’d already hit rock bottom.

When she was done with the water, Dax closed her eyes for a moment and leaned back against the wall, breathing deep and slow through her nose. The headache, it seemed, would not be chased away so easily, but that was a kind of suffering she could endure. Pain. Wasn’t that what she craved, after all? It wasn’t quite the line of blood carved out with a knife or bruises beaten against bone from punching the wall, but pain was pain, and she could use it. Joran had taught her how.

“Is that better?”

Dax squinted her eyes half-open, waiting for the Intendant’s face to blur into focus. “I’m fine,” she said, massaging her temples. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Believe me,” the Intendant chuckled, shaking her head at the implication, “I wasn’t worried.”

She rolled her shoulders in a lazy stretch, chuckling at the look on Dax’s face. A little concern was more than she should expect, Dax knew, and she supposed she should have known that. Who was she, after all, but the latest in a very long line of bed-warmers for the Intendant’s amusement? She’d got her a glass of water; what more did she want?

“Thank you,” she said, biting down on her tongue to try and make it sound sincere. “For the water.”

“You’re quite welcome, my dear.” The Intendant’s eyes flashed in a wordless invitation for Dax to go back to her side, but Dax’s legs were still shaky and weak and she didn’t trust herself to cross the room again. “I must say, you really are quite endearing when you’re suffering like this.”

That was typical, Dax thought moodily. It was just like her to take pleasure in pain, even something as stupidly standard as a hangover. Honestly, the only reason she didn’t bite off a scathing retaliation was because deep down inside she kind of felt the same way.

The memory came flooding back to her once more, and she felt sick all over again, picturing her hands around the Intendant’s throat, hearing her choking moans. Pleasure and pain, like they both said, and the glass fell to the floor as Dax’s hand clapped over her mouth.

“Don’t…” she managed, but the word was lost to the shattering of glass.

The Intendant rolled her eyes. “Now then…” she pressed, quirking a brow and pointedly ignoring Dax’s obvious discomfort. “If you think you can pull yourself together, I thought I might take you out on a little excursion.”

That got Dax’s attention, and put her on her guard as well. “A what?”

“Ah, yes.” The Intendant sighed. “I forgot, you get confused by words with more than one syllable.” Dax scowled her indignation, but plasma exploded behind her eyes and she had to give the expression up with a pitiful whimper. “An excursion, my dear. It means I was thinking that we could take a stroll.”

“A stroll,” Dax echoed, derision colouring the confusion. “A nice, cheerful, well-meaning stroll.”

“Precisely.” Her voice was sharp, though, low with warning. “Though I’d thank you not to take that tone with me. Don’t think I’m not above having you flogged just because you’re feeling fragile this morning.”

Dax rolled her eyes. That hurt even more than the scowl. “I’m sorry, Intendant,” she said, without even a cursory feint at sincerity.

“As well you should be,” the Intendant shot back, ignoring the sarcasm. “You forget, my dear sybarite, that I have your best interests at heart.” 

“Of course you do,” Dax said, voice coarse. “And I’m sure it was ‘my best interests’ you had in mind last night, too, when you made me—”

“Enough!” It was more than a warning this time; it was an authority figure talking to a minion who had been treated far too leniently for far too long. Dax recognised the difference between a threat and a promise, and she quickly shut her mouth. “I don’t know what you did while you were all alone out there in the depths of space, but while you’re on my space station, you will show respect.”

Dax bit her lip. “Intendant…”

“Now,” she pressed on, speaking over her and silencing her quite thoroughly. “I’m sure you’ll agree that it would do you a world of good to get out of here and shake off the cobwebs… and frankly, my dear, I don’t trust you not to go straight back to that damnable bar the very instant I leave you alone.”

She smiled, but Dax could see the venom behind the expression, the promise of punishment never quite fading even as she slipped effortlessly back into her public persona. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and tried not to recoil.

“And where, exactly, do you plan on taking me for this ‘stroll’?” she asked, trying not to sound quite as dubious as she felt.

The Intendant spread her arms, a playful smile lifting her lips with feigned innocence. She was trying to play it casual, as though she hadn’t given the idea very much thought at all, but Dax knew her better than that by now; she was trying too hard to look like she didn’t care at all, and that meant she did care a great deal. It was dangerous, Dax’s instincts were screaming, and she swallowed down an unexpected shudder at the hungry look in the Intendant’s eyes.

“If you must know,” she answered after a long and drawn-out pause, “I thought we might take a trip down to the Ore Processing Centre.” The words were deceptively saccharine, as sweet as sugar and just as unpalatable to a Trill with a hangover. “Unless you’re feeling too _unwell_.”

Dax was, but she would not let the Intendant see that. “Why?” she demanded instead. “Are you planning to make good on those threats to make a slave out of me? Or do you just want me flogged in full view of your precious Terrans?”

“Of course not,” the Intendant laughed. “You’re far too entertaining for me to waste your talents down there. Besides, what kind of example would you set for the workers, even if I did have you flogged in public? You’re not one of them, so why should they care what happened to your pretty little hide? No, no. They’d just be grateful for the time off, and we can’t have that, can we?”

She laughed again, like she really did find the idea deeply amusing, and Dax pinched the bridge of her nose in a vain attempt to drive the headache down. “Of course,” she gritted out. “How silly of me.”

“Anyway,” the Intendant went on, seemingly content to keep running with the hilarious tangent she’d found. “If I did decide to have you flogged, it would be here in the privacy of my quarters. I wouldn’t want to share your screams with anyone else, now, would I?”

Dax clenched her jaw until it hurt. “Perish the thought.”

“Indeed.” And there it was again, that sugar-sweet smile and that saccharine tone of voice, the one that threatened to make Dax ill if she took in too much of it. “No, my dear, you have my word that I shan’t harm a hair on that fragile little head of yours. I simply thought you might appreciate a guided tour…”

“A guided tour,” Dax echoed flatly.

“Well, why not? I know how much it upsets you to think of all those poor Terrans slaving away down there.”

In spite of herself, Dax had to smile at that; for all of her apparent willingness to strike out on her own, it seemed that Jadzia was rather more affected by the Terrans’ plight than she wanted Dax or anyone else to believe. “Can you blame me?” she asked.

The Intendant shrugged. “You’ve always been too quick to condemn what we do here,” she said. “And to condemn me personally. I thought it might be a valuable lesson for you to see for yourself how much better off those ingrates are under my care than they would be under anyone else’s.” Her eyes flashed, a lightning strike of fire on obsidian that lasted less than a heartbeat. “Besides, I’m sure it would appeal to that charming host of yours… that dear fellow who’s caused you so much trouble…”

“Joran,” Dax said automatically, and bit down harder on her lip.

“That’s right,” the Intendant crooned. “ _Joran_. I’m sure he would appreciate the efficiency of our operation here, even if you’re still too much of a bleeding heart to see it for yourself.”

Dax licked the blood from her lip, swallowing to keep from saying something she would inevitably regret. She thought briefly about turning down the Intendant’s thinly-veiled offer, even as she knew all too well that the Intendant could and would make the rest of her time here incredibly miserable if she did that. She’d already pushed her to the limit, and the Intendant’s tender mercies were hardly all that tender to begin with.

Coming from a more civilised universe, Dax found it all too easy to forget that she was safe here only at the Intendant’s behest, and only for as long as she entertained her. It was easy to forget, too, when she was looking at her with that quiet affection of hers that the expression and the mood that went with it could turn to poison in an instant. The Intendant was suspicious and quick to temper (more so even than Dax was just now, and that was saying something), and the least little slight could very easily explode into something quite deadly.

Besides, she couldn’t deny that she was curious, for her own sake as much as for the Intendant’s satisfaction. She knew that there was truth in what she’d said, that the whole thing would almost certainly appeal to Joran, and she could feel the trap closing in on her as she considered it. Her skin itched, feeling suddenly too tight as she thought about the two of them, the tyrannical megalomaniac who so enjoyed sadism in the bedroom and the sociopathic killer who enjoyed it in all aspects of his life. They were well suited to each other, Dax thought, and it wasn’t much of a surprise at all that the Intendant would keep trying to break through Dax’s own barriers to reach the kindred soul she recognised in him, to keep drawing him out of her in increasingly sordid ways, and if it made Dax herself suffer to do it, then all the more pleasure for them both.

It was almost more than she could bear, the thought of going down there and feeling Joran’s perverse appreciation of the Intendant’s brutality, watching with a smile that was not her own as the helpless and innocent were forced to slave their lives away or die in torment. She could already feel him slavering at the thought of it, and the sensation made her wonder just how deep his influence really went.

There was a big difference, she insisted, between what had happened last night and what might yet happen in Ore Processing. As disturbing as it had been, the Intendant was right about the reciprocity of last night’s perversions; though Dax had resisted the pull of pleasure for as long as she could, it was still there, and as desperately as she’d tried to keep from relishing the the Intendant’s breath choking and stuttering in her throat, the Intendant herself seemed to have enjoyed it just as much. It was one thing to submit to something like that in a controlled environment, however, to indulge in sadism when it was reciprocal, but it was another thing entirely to draw the same kind of pleasure from the unjust suffering of innocents.

Would she feel the same way if she let the Intendant take her down to Ore Processing? Would she react just as readily to Joran’s sociopathic malice now as she had last night? Would she be able to forgive herself if she did?

She had to know. She had to know how deep it went, how complete Joran’s hold over her was, how much of herself was left inside all the twisted chaos. Since she’d allowed his memories to resurface, she had been blessedly shielded from having to witness any real suffering, at least beyond the walls of the holosuite and her twisted dreams. The closest she’d come to a real struggle was in watching Kira deal with the fallout from her time on Cardassia, and then it had been no trouble at all to drown out Joran; Jadzia’s emotions had overpowered everything, even Curzon, in a rush to support the friend that belonged to her and her alone. When her Nerys was the one with pain in her eyes, when she was the one suffering, there was no violence strong enough to overwhelm Jadzia’s raw empathy, and no perversion deep enough make her draw pleasure from it.

It was easy to push aside and ignore the potential thrill of terrible things when the situation was personal. That, she had learned from Nerys. Last night she’d discovered something too: that it was also easy, horrifyingly so, to let herself surrender to that same terrible thrill when it was safe and controlled. Joran’s influence was absolute here in the Intendant’s bedroom, and Dax could fight and struggle and resist with everything she had in her but there was nowhere to find a purchase, and all the resistance in the galaxy was futile when the only thing in danger was her pride and the Intendant’s satisfaction. Nothing was really at stake here, no matter how freely the Intendant toyed with the idea, and that made it safe. It made her sick, yes, and it made her hate herself just as surely as the dreams did, just as surely as all of those holosuite bloodbaths, but it was safe.

She had to know her limits, she decided. When it mattered, when it was important, when the pain was real and uncontrolled but not personal, who would be the stronger one? She had to know.

“All right,” she said, the words spilling out of her very quickly, before she had a chance to second-guess herself and change her mind. “If that’s what you want. I’m here at your leisure, after all.”

“Yes, you are.” The Intendant beamed like it was her birthday, and leaned in to kiss Dax tenderly on the forehead and then fiercely on the mouth. “I do love it when you remember that.”

She threaded her arm through Dax’s, pulling her in close, as though they were the very best of friends. The intimacy of the contact was so much more potent than anything they’d done between those dirty sheets, and it made Dax feel very uncomfortable. It was one thing to share the Intendant’s bed, to share sweat and sex and sordid desires with the ruthless dictator who wore her friend’s face, but another thing entirely to pretend that those things meant friendship, to act like they shared something sweet and simple and straightforward, to feign the kind of intimacy that had always come so easily to Dax but so hard to Jadzia… the kind of intimacy that she did share with her Kira. It made her itch again, and redoubled the pounding of her head.

Still, though, she didn’t pull away. Let the Intendant parade her around Terok Nor like some kind of prize, if that was what she wanted. Dax would sooner hold out her strength in case she needed it when they reached their destination. She wouldn’t be any good to herself if she wasted what precious little energy she had on something as mundane as this; she didn’t have enough for a confrontation now, not over something so trivial, and definitely not when she was trying to brace for the horrors she was about to see, struggling to ground herself in who she was instead of who her scrambled instincts told her to be. Already, she could feel Joran stirring in her, the pull of his malice, that cold and calculating love of other people’s pain shaping itself into anticipation, sharp as a blade at the base of her aching brain, and she couldn’t afford to give him an opening to take her completely.

She groaned as they stood in the turbolift, disoriented by the gentle thrum that sounded nothing like the well-ordered systems she was used to, always kept at peak efficiency by the expert hand of Miles O’Brien. Dax missed the chief, missed their occasional day-long excursions into the guts of the station just to see what new problems they could find and fix. When they’d first arrived on Deep Space Nine, the place had been a hole; barely anything had worked, and what little worked at all still didn’t work right. O’Brien had gone days at a time without sleep just trying to get the place into some kind of order, and being the only other member of the senior staff with an interest in that sort of thing, Dax had done everything she could to help him.

The hard work had been well worth it. Once they got the station running, short of the occasional Cardassian-Federation software incompatibility or leftover Bajoran sabotage, the station had become a hive of (mostly) functional machinery. Benjamin had been proud, but to Dax and O’Brien the joy was in seeing the job done well. She smiled at the memory, then sighed as the Terok Nor turbolift sputtered and shuddered, aggravating her hangover and reminding her again of just how far from home she really was.

The Ore Processing Centre, when they got there, was everything Dax had imagined it would be, and worse.

Slaves worked to within an inch of their lives while Cardassians and Klingons stood watch over them, shouting threats and abuses if anyone dared to pause in their labour for even a moment. No light, no space, and no mercy, workers lashed to within an inch of their life if they so much as stopped to catch their breath, and suffering far worse if they dared ask for anything. It was like a holo-novel, one of those old-earth documentaries about all the terrible things that Benjamin’s fellow humans — Terrans — used to do to each other, or perhaps a piece of obscene Ferenginar propaganda intended to keep the planet’s females in line and submissive. Things like that didn’t belong in the modern world, and they definitely didn’t belong on Deep Space Nine.

But then, this wasn’t Deep Space Nine, was it? Dax thought of the turbolift, that rattling safety hazard, and looked around at these dying and depredated people, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe at all.

The heat was overwhelming, and that didn’t help either. As a Trill, Dax had no love of high temperatures even at the best of times, but this place pushed her far beyond her limits; it would have been unbearable even if she hadn’t already been feeling ill, but given her precarious condition it was a thousand times worse. Somewhere deep inside of her, she thought she heard Emony complaining about the lack of ventilation in a run-down old shuttlecraft that was supposed to be carrying her from one star system to the next for a competition. The flight had only been a few hours, and it hadn’t even been that warm, but she’d found it utterly intolerable. Pampered Emony wouldn’t survive five minutes in a place like this, and poor hung-over Jadzia wasn’t faring much better.

In a cruel sort of way way, she supposed the heat was something of a blessing in disguise. It was so oppressive, so excruciating that she didn’t have the strength to think of anything else. Whatever she or Joran might have made of the situation, she couldn’t say for sure, because for those first few suffocating minutes, all she could think about was not passing out.

“Are you feeling all right?” the Intendant asked, standing smugly at her side and twisting her features into false concern; yet again, she seemed to have misinterpreted the source of Dax’s discomfort, no doubt this time for shock and horror at what was happening in this place. “You’re starting to look pale again.”

“I’m all right.” Dax took a deep breath, and decided to be honest; for once, the truth would wipe that self-satisfied smirk off her face. “Trills don’t do well in the heat.”

The Intendant coughed, not the least bit delicately; Dax didn’t need to look at her to know that once again her thoughts had taken an inappropriate turn. “That’s news to me,” she remarked, baring her teeth just a little, more for the benefit of her workers than for Dax’s. “If I recall correctly, you seemed to rather enjoy raising the temperature last night.” Her eyes flashed, mischief masking malice. “Are you going to blame that on your past hosts as well, dearest?”

Dax glared at her. “That’s completely different, and you know it,” she snapped, then remembered that they were not alone in the sanctuary of the Intendant’s quarters this time, that they were surrounded by potential witnesses and that her place in the unjust hierarchy of this station was very low indeed. “I mean, that’s not what I meant, Intendant.”

“I should hope not,” the Intendant said sharply.

The warning in her voice was unmistakable, but for once Dax didn’t bristle at it; from what little she knew of this universe’s Terok Nor, Ore Processing was the pivotal point for everything the Intendant insisted she worked so hard to achieve. If her slaves performed badly, then that performance would reflect just as badly on her; it went without saying that here, more than anywhere else on the station, she felt the need to uphold her perfect public persona, the benevolent dictator smiling down on the poor unwashed masses. And all the more so now, Dax supposed, with a rebellion kicking at the door.

So, with a bad taste in her mouth, she played up the humility as best she could while her body adapted to the unwanted heat, looking as pitiful as she could and mumbling a handful of half-hearted apologies. She would make it up to her later, she promised, keeping her face down and her eyes fixed on the floor. She’d been so caught up in her journey of self-discovery, in figuring out where she stood and what she wanted to feel, she realised now that she had grossly underestimated just how important this place was to the Intendant. Joran wasn’t the only time-bomb ticking away down here, it seemed, and suddenly she was afraid of more than just herself.

After a long, hard moment, the Intendant’s features softened just a little, and she trailed her hand along the curve of Dax’s jaw, towards where the line of spots began to fade, equal parts forgiving and possessive, no doubt as much a show for her seething public as for her own pleasure.

“Look at them,” she said, gesturing expansively at the miserable mass of downtrodden slaves. “See the hate in their eyes.”

Dax didn’t point out that the hate was well-deserved. She didn’t say anything at all; truthfully, she was still trying to keep from having to look at them at all. She felt light-headed, nauseous from the hangover and the heat, and she just couldn’t bring herself to look at their faces, to see the pain and suffering and know that there was nothing she could do about it… or, worse still, to see it and feel excited, exhilarated, to drink it down like that damned glass of water, like she knew Joran wanted to.

“They don’t understand,” the Intendant went on, oblivious to Dax’s misery, as she was so often oblivious to things she didn’t think involved her. “They don’t understand that I have no choice. They don’t understand the strain I’m under, or how lenient I am. They don’t realise how much worse it would be for them without me. Anyone else would’ve had them all executed the second that traitor Benjamin Sisko ran off with his tinkerer. Anyone else would have let them rot down here.” The pain in her voice was almost genuine, and that just made Dax feel even more ill. She really did believe this madness. “But not me. I treat them fairly. I treat them well. I do the best I can under very difficult circumstances, but they still hate me.” She tilted Dax’s chin up, forced her to meet her eyes. “Why do you think that is?”

Dax swallowed, resisting the urge to flinch. The air was thick with salt and sweat; it made her think about the taste of blood, the smell of bones and death and decay, the bitter memory of guilt and shame, so many things she couldn’t afford to think about here, and so she focused on thinking up a diplomatic reply, if only to keep from dropping to her knees.

It was a treacherously thin tightrope she was walking; the Intendant wouldn’t be so forgiving of another slip, not in the presence of her workers, and Dax knew her well enough to know that she would be looking out for any tremor in her voice. She was on her guard here, far more than she had ever been in the privacy of her bedroom, and she was hyper-alert, keenly attentive for any hint of wavering loyalty, anything to suggest that Dax might switch sides, that she prove herself another insurgent, just like Sisko had. The Intendant would kill her in an instant if she thought there was even a tiny risk of that, and all the better if she died in front of the workers.

But what to say? She didn’t have the strength to shape a convincing lie, but the truth was a bitter pill to someone like the Intendant. Was there a tactful way of explaining to a narcissistic tyrant that her slaves’ hatred was justified, without being branded a traitor?

“I think…” she said, choosing her words carefully, entirely too aware of how weak she sounded, how unconvincing even to herself. “I think they have a different view of what’s fair and what isn’t.”

“Well, they’re wrong!” the Intendant barked. Dax supposed she should be grateful that she didn’t lash out and strike her for daring to say even that much. “They don’t understand the position I’m in. They don’t know what it’s like to be in charge, to have to answer to Central Command. They don’t understand how difficult my life is.” Dax bit her tongue to keep from pointing out that, from what she could see, the Terrans understood ‘difficult lives’ perfectly well. “They can sing about their precious freedom all they want, but they have no idea. They’d all be dead if it wasn’t for me. If that idiot Garak had his way, there wouldn’t be anyone left on the station at all, and then who would hear their cries for freedom?”

Dax tried to steady herself. She felt like she was sinking in quicksand, legs turned to gelatine. “It’s hard for them to see the way things are up here when they’re down there.”

Angry, the Intendant took her by the arm, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks, and hauled her across the sweat-choked space, right into the middle of the workforce. The air was even thicker down there, if such a thing was possible, completely saturated with the salt smell of sweat and long-dried tears, and Dax was more than ready to give up and crumple to her knees, but the Intendant was too strong, holding her upright, fingers squeezing like a vice and eyes like twin volcanoes. Her grip was a warning: _embarrass me here, and I will kill you where you stand without a moment’s hesitation._

Dax reeled, sickened by this place, the heat and the stench and all the poor helpless people who were stuck here, and she had to fight with everything she had to keep from gagging. She didn’t know if it was Jadzia feeling the weight of it so intensely, or Joran driving his gleeful hate into her stomach like a battering ram, but she supposed it didn’t matter either way. Whoever was to blame, the end result was the same, and the only thing that kept her from doubling over and losing her dignity and her consciousness was the warning snarl curling the Intendant’s lip, the one that said she would not be the least bit lenient this time.

“Do you see, my dear?” she asked, voice low but pitched deliberately so that any workers stupid enough to look up from their task and watch them would hear it without much effort; there was so much more to what she was saying than the words, Dax knew, and struggled to listen. “Do you see why it’s so important that you feed that inner violence of yours? Do you see why it’s so important that you don’t let that beautiful temper of yours go to waste?” She gestured expansively, a queen taking in her kingdom. “These people need discipline. They need a strong hand, someone who won’t coddle them, someone who isn’t afraid to use force when other methods fail. They need someone who will make them see just how lucky they are.”

She shifted her body, a slight but deeply salacious movement, and repositioned Dax’s as well, so that they was facing each other, then cupped her face with pointed intimacy, a tenderness that bore no hint of what they both knew she was truly feeling. Dax felt a heat prick her skin that had nothing to do with the rancid air, and tried not to think too much about the potential audience pressing in on all sides.

“I can see the way you’re looking at them,” the Intendant went on, eyes bright even in the murky darkness. “That cloying empathy. The sickening sentimentality and the adorable if misplaced compassion. You’re such a sweet little thing, aren’t you? So full of fool-hearted hope that there’s a better world for all these pathetic little souls somewhere out in the great beyond…” She sighed, exaggeratedly loud. “But that world doesn’t exist, sweetness, and it’s cruel to feed their delusions. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see how spiteful it is to let them believe in something that can never be?”

She exhaled again, so heavy that Dax almost believed she meant it. “I don’t…” she managed, but didn’t know what else to say.

“Maybe I’m cruel, too,” the Intendant went on, ignoring her. “They certainly think I am. But at least I don’t feed them with false hope. At least I don’t ply them with cock-eyed optimism for some kind of impossible utopian future. At least I don’t let them believe in something that will never happen. It’s for their own good. Surely you can see that. Surely you, of all people, can understand…”

She really did want her to, Dax realised. Not just for the sake of the workers, but for her own validation; she wasn’t just spouting Alliance propaganda, trying to crush any hope of rebellion in a dissenting workforce. She was practically begging, in her own deluded way, for Dax to understand, to hear and agree with her. She really, truly, and honestly believed in what she was saying, that hopelessness was the only merciful option, that despair and depredation were the only humane options.

Dax’s head throbbed all over again, but this time it had nothing to do with bloodwine. Even Joran didn’t know what to make of that, how to interpret the self-delusion the Intendant was pouring so liberally over this soulless place. Even he didn’t know whether to be delighted at the sight of so much suffering, or simply confused by the Intendant’s desperate flailing for self-justification.

She shook her head, trying and failing to clear it a little, and spat out the taste of acid and blood. “False hope is better than no hope,” she rasped, hoarse but spurred on by conviction. “Anything is better than no hope.”

The words spilled off her tongue naturally, almost automatic, as though she’d been saying them all her life, and it was only after they were out, only once she found herself staring back into the firestorm fury of the Intendant’s eyes that she realised she had been. She had been saying it all her life, because she had felt it all her life. Well, Jadzia had, anyway, always driven on by a fatalistic sense of optimism, the absurd hope that she would get what she wanted simply because she deserved it, because it was right, because she had worked hard.

It was hope that had sent her back to the Symbiosis Commission, begging for a second chance even after she was washed out. It was hope that had spurred her on to request the Dax symbiont even after everything Curzon had done to torture her. It was hope that had sent her to Deep Space Nine, alight with the thought of being reunited with an old friend in a new place. All her life, that shy little girl was driven by hope, inspired to do things she’d never imagined herself capable of, even things that history had taught her nobody could do. Hope. Her very existence had been defined by it.

She closed her eyes, remembering the day she learned they’d washed her out of the initiate program, that awful moment where the ground collapsed beneath her feet and the world closed in around her, that devastating moment where she couldn’t breathe or think or do anything, where she was so sure she was dying because she could not process what she was feeling. Her entire existence was reduced to nothing in that one instant, a whole lifetime of excellence and achievement burned down to ash and thrown into the wind, discarded like so much wasted breath.

The memory struck like a blow, powerful enough to block out all the unpleasantness of this place, to drive her back inside herself. She remembered the horror, the disbelief, and the indescribable terror that had followed. She’d never thought to make a backup plan, never bothered to think of an alternative path for her life. She had been through Starfleet Academy, had excelled in four different fields of science, had worked herself down to the bone, but in that instant she forgot all of that. All she could think of was that it wasn’t enough. She had done everything they’d asked of her, and more besides, and in the end none of it had mattered at all. In the end, everything she’d done, everything she’d achieved had all come down to that one awful word. No.

It had almost been the end of her. For one long moment of sick disbelief, the rejection had almost been too much. She’d been so close to crawling back home, hiding under her childhood bed and never coming out again. All that hard work, all those accomplishments, and for that one long moment she was reduced to a child, irrational and petulant, and she had truly felt like everything she’d done amounted to nothing, that all those premiere distinctions added up to zero, that she had wasted her whole life. All the logic and reasoning she’d displayed throughout her academic career was gone too, up in smoke, leaving behind nothing but smouldering ash and four useless degrees.

It wasn’t until later, with clarity and hindsight, that she realised just how much those degrees were worth, that each one was an achievement of its own, that even without a symbiont she had still managed to build something out of herself, that she had done something worthwhile… and that maybe she was worthwhile too.

So she reapplied. She clung to her achievements, to her future, to everything she had made for herself, everything that even Curzon Dax couldn’t take away, all the things she’d done and accomplished and learned, everything she was and everything she’d made all by herself. She wrapped them around herself, shaped them into a suit of armour, protected herself against Curzon and all the ways he’d made her feel small and weak and worthless. She wasn’t worthless, and she wouldn’t let an old man wash her out just because he was washed-up himself. She had worked too hard for that, and she deserved more. If nothing else, she deserved his respect. She had earned that much.

That was really all she’d wanted when she reapplied. She knew better than to expect that they would let her back into the program, but it was the hope of seeing Curzon’s surly face light up in a moment of pride that spurred her on, drove her to do what nobody else had ever done, made her brave and strong and irresistible. All she’d really wanted was for Curzon to look at her and realise that he’d made a mistake… but what she got was so much more.

She got back in, and she got her symbiont. She got _Dax_. She got everything she’d ever wanted, everything that had seemed so impossible after that first horrible _“no”_. And it really should have been impossible. It was unprecedented and implausible, and if the Intendant had been there with her, she would have said it was pointless, that Jadzia was holding out for something that would never happen, that it was false hope. She would insist that Jadzia was wasting her time and energy on pipe dreams and silly childish ambitions; she would have waved all those premiere distinctions in her face and told her to get a real job. And little Jadzia, young and shy and filled to overflowing with self-doubt and self-loathing, would have listened to her.

Not any more, though. Not now.

In that moment, she felt almost whole. As she looked around at all those desperate lost souls, feeling their pain and drowning in the heat and the salt, sweat and tears and blood, slavery and oppression and hope, as she looked around and took it all in, she felt connected. Not to Curzon or Joran, or any of them, but to Jadzia. To herself. No roguish old men or sociopathic monsters, no legislators or pilots or engineers. Just her, Jadzia Dax, and everything she was and everything she would be. For the first time in weeks, she remembered what it was to feel like herself.

The Intendant, of course, was not quite so quixotic. “How can you say that?” she demanded; one look at her face told Dax that the question was a serious one, that she genuinely couldn’t fathom the concept. “How can you claim that it’s better for these pathetic creatures to wish for things they’ll never have?”

“Because we have to,” Dax whispered; though her voice was growing weaker and weaker, her spirit felt stronger with every word. “We all have to believe in something. We have to hope for something. We have to… we have to have _faith_. It’s what makes us who we are. Even when we have nothing…”

Suddenly, all she could think of was Kira. Kira, with her Prophets and her faith and the way she looked at Dax in the runabout, the way that faith had radiated out from her, bright and blinding as a supernova. Kira, her Kira, her Nerys, who defined faith and hope better than anyone Dax had ever met, who defied the odds in ways that she couldn’t fathom, even after eight lifetimes. _Kira_ , and she was struck with all the force of a blow by how different they were, her Nerys and this cold-hearted Intendant, this tyrant who would tear the hope from the hopeless, strip them of everything that Nerys held so precious.

The Intendant was glaring at her, eyes burning so much more fiercely than the unbearable air, waiting for Dax to finish her thought, but Dax couldn’t bring herself to even look at her. How could she explain? How could she make her understand? She wasn’t Nerys, and she hadn’t lived the life Nerys had lived. She was everything Nerys hated, everything that was so terrible about the Cardassian occupation. The Intendant had never been forced to live under an oppressive regime; she was the oppressive regime, and she would never understand what it was to live on the other side.

“Anything is better than nothing,” Dax finished at last, futile and ineffective.

The Intendant snarled, utterly outraged, looking for all the world like Dax had shot a phaser at her back, like she had stripped her down and humiliated her in front of her precious subjects. She was worse than dangerous now, worse than angry, and Dax felt a flood of vindication course through her as she stared her down, suddenly oblivious to the heat and the sweat and everything else.

She was Jadzia Dax. She was Jadzia Dax, and she had earned the right to be here. She, with her false hope and her cock-eyed optimism, had earned the right to be here, to look the Intendant in the eye and cling to the things she believed in, the things that Nerys believed in. The Intendant could not take that away from them any more than she could take the cries for freedom and respect away from the helpless Terrans slaving away in front of them — helpless, yes, but not hopeless. Not hopeless. Never, ever hopeless.

Sensing that she was losing ground, the Intendant squeezed her arm, hard enough to hurt. “Then tell them,” she hissed, furious that Dax would dare to defy her in such a public space, that she would dare to voice anything at all but absolute agreement. “If that’s what you think, why don’t you tell it to them? Tell those pathetic creatures that your way is better than mine. Tell them it’s better to work themselves bloody for something they’ll never have than for the good of the Alliance. Tell them it’s better to die choking on false hope and abandoned faith than knowing they did their duty. Tell them how much their hope is worth, and we’ll see if they thank you for it.”

Dax clenched her teeth. “Gladly.”

The Intendant smiled dark and dangerous. Then, without warning, she twisted Dax’s arm until she cried out, wrenching her whole body around until she stood in front of her, then pushed her down onto her knees.

Her face was unrecognisable now, and it certainly wasn’t Kira’s, the fire in her eyes blocking out almost everything else in this dark place. In some oddly peaceful corner of her mind, Dax supposed she should have known this was coming, should have seen it from the very beginning, and in truth a part of her probably had. She was supposed to be on her best behaviour out here, on display like the perfect little pet, taught to do tricks at the Intendant’s command. She was a puppet, here to validate the brutality that was going on, and she had known that going in. For all her preoccupation with finding herself, she had known the Intendant’s intentions perfectly well.

Maybe all of this was why the Intendant wanted to feed her temper. Maybe that was why she felt such a kinship with the part of Dax that was Joran. She wanted someone who would thrive on the terrible things that were happening here, someone who would bask in the helplessness of these downtrodden people and then smile up at their benevolent dictator, face aglow with praise and awe. She wanted someone to mock the silly Terrans for wanting their freedom and lick the Intendant’s boots for denying it. She wanted someone to help quash insurgent thoughts, not encourage them.

But that wasn’t Jadzia, and right now it wasn’t Dax either. Let Joran come to life behind closed doors. Let him slick Dax’s palms with blood, or bruise her knuckles, or haunt her dreams, or get off on power and pain. Let him do whatever the hell he wanted when nobody else was involved, when it was just him and her. Let him have his moment in private, where it was safe. But not here, and not now. Here and now, she had to be Jadzia.

Maybe the Intendant had underestimated her, thinking that she would give in to the anger inside. Maybe she’d thought that Joran was stronger, or that Jadzia was weaker. Maybe. But then, maybe she had known exactly what would happen when they got here. Maybe she’d wanted to make Dax into an example after all, to prove to her cursed Terrans once and for all that nobody was immune to the iron rule of this place. For all Dax knew, she’d been brought down here as a sacrifice, a paragon of all the reasons why they should give up their futile fight for freedom. Who better to string up as a martyr, she supposed, than the Intendant’s current bed-warmer?

“Tell them,” the Intendant said again.

She pressed her knuckles against the back of Dax’s neck. It hurt a little, but the pain gave her strength; for the first time, Dax wondered if perhaps she should be grateful to Joran for that. She opened her mouth, not knowing what to say, only knowing that she had to say something, that she needed to placate the Intendant, that honesty and hope were all she had left and that neither of those things would satisfy her.

Before she had a chance to say anything, though, the Intendant seemed to be struck by a fresh thought. She stepped around Dax’s body, leaving her on her knees, bowed like a supplicant, no better than the Terrans milling around, or even the overseers who stood above cracking their metaphorical whips, keeping precious order with words borrowed from the Intendant’s iron tongue. This was all deliberate, she thought with no small amount of bitterness; though she’d said she had no intention of publicly humiliating her, that it would serve no purpose, Dax could tell that she wasn’t kneeling here by some happy accident. There was a point to be made here, and it would be.

Leaving her there on her knees, the Intendant moved through the crowd, weaving between dirt-drenched bodies like an empress, smiling with false kindness as the Terrans halted their work and turned to watch.

The fear on their faces was sickening; Dax again forced down the urge to heave, watching with horrified breathlessness as the Intendant grabbed one of them, seemingly at random, taking her roughly by the arm and dragged her out in front of her fellow slaves. Her face was obscured by the tangles of her hair, eyes downcast, so it wasn’t until the Intendant threw her down at her feet that Dax got a good look at the dirt-smeared features, and the recognition caught in her throat like a scream.

“… _Keiko_?”


	17. Chapter 17

“Do I know you?”

Dax cursed her reflexes. She could feel the Intendant towering over her, waiting for an explanation, and she could see the haunted spectre of the woman staring blankly up at her, scared and confused, so sure that this was some kind of trick, a cruel joke being played on the unfortunate Terran. She thought she was here to learn a lesson, Dax realised. She thought that she’d been dragged out in front of her fellow slaves as an example, a warning. _Don’t think we don’t know you, and everything you do. We know who you are. We know everything about you._ She thought that Dax was toying with her, mocking her, and Dax’s horrified guilt surged up even more forcefully.

She tried to steady herself, to at least try to look apologetic. “No,” she said, very carefully. “No. I…” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “You reminded me of someone, that’s all.”

But that wasn’t true, and the harder she looked into the dirt-smudged face, the more striking the likeness.

Without a doubt, the woman huddled before her was Keiko O’Brien. She was shaking and terrified, still reeling from the Intendant’s rough treatment and the assumption that something unspeakable was about to happen to her, but since Dax had called her name she was too busy staring up at her to think of hiding her face. Smudged with dirt, lined with the marks of exhaustion and neglect, eyes that were usually so bright turned dull and lifeless under the rigours of this place. She wore the brand of Terok Nor, far deeper than the lines on her face, but she was who she was.

Everyone on Deep Space Nine knew Keiko O’Brien, the strong-minded botanical genius who (until very recently) had single-handedly run a school for the station’s children. Dax herself liked Keiko well enough; they weren’t exactly firm friends, but they spent more than their share of time together through the mutual connection of Chief O’Brien and their shared appreciation for alien plant life, and Dax greatly admired Keiko’s diligence and dedication to the things that mattered to her. Few on the station didn’t know about her early clashes with Kai Winn of Bajor on the subject of formal education, and Dax remembered feeling a new sense of admiration for her in the wake of that. She had seen her in a completely new light then, as many people had, and tried to always make time for at least a passing ‘hello’ and an occasional cup of tea.

The vibrant spirit that she had come to associate with that Keiko was notably and painfully absent in this one, though, and Dax ached to think of what Chief O’Brien would think if he knew there was a version of his wife somewhere out there who looked like this, who toiled and laboured away as a slave, worked to within an inch of her life, and with even that final inch under constant threat. A lump rose in her throat, but this time it had nothing to do with the heat or the hangover; she didn’t feel sick, she just felt sad. For the Keiko O’Brien she knew so well, and for the potential that must have died a long time ago in this broken-down reflection someone so strong.

Other than her face, there was nothing at all to suggest they were the same person. It wasn’t like Jadzia, a hardened echo of Dax, rough and ready but still carrying that same dry wit, that same sense of identity; for every little thing she didn’t recognise when she looked at Jadzia, there were a dozen more that she did, and she found it simultaneously unnerving and comforting. Even with everything they were both going through — and even that in itself was so similar and yet so different — they were still like-minded souls. They were still Dax, both of them.

But then, it wasn’t like the Intendant either, a brutal and serrated incarnation of Kira Nerys, a ruthless tyrant with a taste for narcissism and little patience for anyone else, so unlike the passionate and dedicated young woman that Dax knew so well. Only the tiniest glimmering fragments of Dax’s Kira remained in her, in the way she smiled or the fire in her eyes, rudimentary little things used to devastating effect in completely different ways. The Intendant was nothing like Kira Nerys, and she never would be.

Keiko was nothing like either of them. She wasn’t an echo of the Keiko that Dax knew, but she wasn’t so violently different as the Intendant either. In the barely-existent light of this place, she was sure she could see the ghosts of everything this Keiko might have become, everything that Keiko O’Brien was. She could have been a botanist, could have been a teacher, could have been a wife or a mother or all of those things together. She could have become that Keiko if she’d just been dealt a better life. So much lost and gone and wasted… no, not wasted, _destroyed_. By the Alliance, and by the Intendant.

It broke Dax’s heart to see it, but what could she do? The Intendant would kill them both without a second thought if she suspected foul play. All she could do was meet Keiko’s eyes, those dark and frightened eyes that were so unlike the vibrant schoolteacher Dax knew, and hope that she could see just a little of what she was feeling, just a little of the pain and empathy and understanding. _I know you,_ she thought. _I know you, and I know what you could be._

If Keiko did see any of that, though, it didn’t register on her face. She just whispered, “You knew my name,” like she couldn’t believe anyone would.

Dax swallowed. “I…”

“You called me ‘Keiko’.” It was a simple observation, but even as she said it, she flinched and bowed her head, recoiling as though anticipating a blow.

“Coincidence,” Dax insisted quickly, hating the bitterness of the lie, and hating herself all the more for being stupid enough to make it necessary; the Intendant was right there, so what else could she say? “You look like a friend of mine… well, the wife of a friend of mine. She’s a botanist and a teacher, and I just…” The Intendant gave an irate cough, and Dax cut herself off before she had the chance to lose what minimal control she still had over her rising temper. “It doesn’t matter.”

“That’s right,” the Intendant said, leaping on the opportunity with her usual swiftness. “You don’t matter.”

“I didn’t say that,” Dax snapped back. No longer caring about the trouble it might cause, she took Keiko’s hands in her own, as gently as she dared. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

Keiko looked like she might pass out. The Intendant, meanwhile, burst out laughing. She crouched effortlessly between them, grazing the edges of her fingertips along Keiko’s jaw, taunting and teasing just like she did with Dax, but biding her time until the slave looked up of her own volition, meeting her eyes under her own power. Then, incensed by the act of defiance, she struck a smart blow across the side of her face.

“What was that for?” Dax blurted out before she could stop herself.

The Intendant ignored her. She brought her hand back down, steadying her balance, and waited for Keiko to recover herself. Only when she’d stopped trembling did the Intendant grace her with speech, and when she did, Dax found herself desperately wishing that she hadn’t.

“I’m afraid she’s not sorry at all, my dear,” she murmured, as though Dax was somehow the villain of this piece. “Not for this, or for anything else. She’s not the least bit sorry.”

“Don’t,” Dax said, voice sharp and shrill, acutely aware of the fact that they were gathering an audience. “Don’t say that.”

“Why?” the Intendant demanded. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?” She tugged at Keiko’s hair, forcing her to look up at Dax, and Dax felt a spasm of pain clench in her chest at the despair she saw in her eyes, those patient teacher’s eyes, those fascinated botanist’s eyes. “Tell her, Jadzia. Tell her how much you enjoy the Terrans’ false hope.”

Dax fought back tears; if she let herself cry now, it would be the end of her. Worse, it would probably be the end of Keiko too, and Dax couldn’t bear the thought of carrying that on her conscience. She had to stay strong. She had to stay at least strong enough for one of them to survive this, even if it wasn’t her. She had to find some tiny shred of inner strength somewhere in the roiling of her guts and the pounding of her head, the heat and the sweat and the blood and the tears. She had to find _something_.

“I didn’t say that,” she insisted, voice weak but turned to steel when she met the malice in the Intendant’s eyes. “I said that everyone should have hope. I said… I meant…”

Keiko blinked, confused and frightened, clearly sensing that she was in the middle of something that wasn’t really about her at all, deeply grateful but also not entirely sure how she was expected to behave. Obviously she was expected to side with the Intendant — that went without saying — but she clearly had no idea what to do beyond that. _Survive,_ Dax thought, and willed her to hear. _That’s all you have to do. Just survive._

“And what, exactly, did you mean?” the Intendant pressed, no doubt knowing all too well what Dax was thinking, and how suicidal it would be to say it out loud.

“Hope,” Dax forced out again, clinging to the concept with everything she had in her. Jadzia had never been particularly erudite, but Lela and Curzon certainly were, and she longed for their influence now. “You should always have hope. It doesn’t matter if it’s… it doesn’t matter if you…” She tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. “It doesn’t matter…”

Keiko’s eyes had widened, fear touched by sorrow, and Dax hated the position she’d been thrown into, the need to shatter this poor woman’s spirit even more than it already was or risk inciting the wrath of the dictator crouched between them, just itching for an excuse to drop the noose.

“You see?” The Intendant was beaming, which was worrying enough even in a comfortable scenario. “Do you see how cruel she is? Having the gall to tell you that you don’t matter. And not just once, but twice! Deny it again, my dear. I dare you to.”

“Stop that.” She realised she was pleading, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She could feel the noose around her neck, tightening; if she didn’t find a way to rip it off soon, it would cut off her breathing entirely. “Stop twisting my words. Stop making this into something it’s not. I just said…”

“Yes, yes. ‘Hope’. Do you really expect this lovely creature to think that’s a comfort?” She turned back to Keiko. “You see? She dangles these useless ideals in front of you like they can save you, when we all know perfectly well that she’s the one holding your life in her hand.”

A terrible weight dropped into the pit of Dax’s stomach. “What?” she managed.

“Oh yes,” the Intendant went on, venom dripping from every syllable; though she was speaking to Keiko, Dax knew the words were entirely for her benefit. “She could end your life just by flashing a smile, if she wanted to. She’d just have to say the word, and I would have you cut down right here and now, in front of all your little Terran friends. Not that I’d want to, of course. I’m on your side, as you know. But I’m afraid I’m so taken with her, I’d give her anything she asked for. Even the life of one of my most cherished workers.”

That, of course, wasn’t the least bit true; the Intendant probably didn’t even know Keiko’s name, much less ‘cherish’ her work. But then, of course, that was not the point and no-one among them was deluded enough to believe it was.

“Intendant—”

“She knows that,” the Intendant went on, eyes locked on Keiko. “She knows that a single word could see you dead. She knows that the only real power here is hers. She knows that she’s the one you should be begging… and yet, she still has the callousness, the gall, to stand before you, and taunt you with ‘hope’.”

“Intendant…” Dax gritted again.

The Intendant did look at her, then, but it was only for a fraction of a second, just enough to cut her the most fleeting of glances. “Now, now, my dear, don’t be so modest. If you’re going to fill this wretched young creature’s head with all that nonsense, don’t you think she has the right to know your position? Don’t you think she has the right to know that her hope is only worth as much as you say it is? If you’re going to dangle your precious delusions in front of her, she has the right to know that you can take them away just as easily.”

“Intendant, I—”

But the Intendant had already turned back to Keiko, all sweetness and false compassion. “You see? I may be ruthless, but I’m not cruel. I don’t let you Terrans forget your place, or how fragile it is. I don’t pretend to be your friend, holding out hope with one hand and sharpening my knife with the other. Call me a tyrant if you like, but at least I respect your kind enough to be honest with you. You’re born slaves, and you will die as slaves.” She turned back to Dax at last, and the fire in her eyes was truly terrible; if she wasn’t so furious, Dax would almost be scared. “Giving hope to a Terran is like offering them the freedom to take their own life instead of taking it for them. What difference does it make when they’re just as dead in the end?”

“It makes a difference,” Dax snarled, rabid. “It makes all the difference.”

Keiko bowed her head, eyes back on the dirt-smeared floor, the obedient little slave. Dax shivered to watch her, to see how easily she fell into her role in the Intendant’s little drama, how well she seemed to know her place in this twisted shadow-play; did she even remember that the Intendant had struck her barely a moment ago just for daring to look at her? Couldn’t she see in Dax’s face how completely it was breaking her heart just to be here at all?

Of course she couldn’t. She wouldn’t see anything the Intendant didn’t want her to see. In her eyes, Dax was exactly what she was shown to be, the cold-hearted lackey, the malicious one who wanted to see the Terrans humiliated, the cruel visitor who had come here only to mock them and play with them. She was, naturally, the perfect counterpoint to the Intendant, the unwitting overseer of this hellhole, the benevolent dictator who would never stoop to such dishonesty, who just wanted the Terrans to do their jobs and would leave them peacefully to themselves if they would only show her the same respect.

The worst part was, it seemed to work. Whatever hatred Keiko might have been justified in feeling towards the Intendant was well-hidden indeed, no doubt by necessity. Dax didn’t want to know what happened to Terrans who dared to show disrespect to her face, and she certainly couldn’t blame Keiko for not wanting to experience it for herself. Still, it stung to see the obedience in her eyes, empty and hollow as she chanced another glance up at the Intendant’s cool features.

After a long moment, she finally ventured to say something, and when she did her voice was rough with unvoiced emotion and rusty with lack of use. Dax supposed, she didn’t get many many opportunities to speak her mind, or to speak at all. She certainly wasn’t speaking her mind here, though; she sounded more like a pre-written character in a holo-novel, blurting out whatever the program dictated, than a living and breathing creature.

“You’re very merciful, Intendant,” she said dutifully. “Thank you.”

Dax could barely control her temper. She’d expected to struggle at controlling Joran when she got here, but she couldn’t possibly have imagined a scenario like this, a situation where she wanted so desperately to indulge him, to let his violence out in full force, to tear the Intendant to pieces right there in front of her damned slaves. She could scarcely even see through the haze of red that fogged her field of vision, all of his anger and hatred and all of her righteousness clashing together inside of her.

For the first time, all that anger felt completely justified. For the first time, she felt vindicated in being so angry, validated in wanting to do such terrible things. The Intendant was doing terrible things too, wasn’t she? Abusing her workforce until they could hardly stand, then hauling Dax out in front of them like some kind of pariah, a puppet to twist and jerk about, demonising her so that her subjects would see their tyrant in a more benevolent light, twisting her into something she could pretend was worse than herself.

It was ingenious, really. But Dax was too furious to care about how damn clever she was. “Intendant—”

“Now, now…” She was positively beaming at how well this was turning out for her, and Dax supposed she couldn’t blame her for that arrogant self-satisfaction; unwitting and stupid as she was, she had played the perfect pawn, if not in the way she’d anticipated. “It’s bad enough that you feel compelled to torment this poor little creature, don’t you think? Let’s not embarrass her any further by making a scene.”

“You don’t—”

“You’re quite welcome, my dear,” the Intendant said, turning her smile on Keiko, then rounding back on Dax. “Well, my sweet Jadzia? Does this charming young woman have your permission to return to her labours? Or would you like to toy with her some more? I’m sure we could arrange some—”

“Stop it.” Dax gritted her teeth, fighting back the urge to bite. “I don’t have any authority here. You know that. Stop using me in your sick games.”

The Intendant gaped at her with mock horror. “Do you see that?” she asked Keiko, dramatically tragic. “Do you see the way she reduces your life to a game?”

She shook her head, as though wounded on her workers’ behalf. The urge to assault her was growing more potent by the second, and the only reason Dax was able to resist it was because she knew that the Intendant would punish Keiko for it if she did. “I didn’t—”

“You see?” The Intendant raised her voice a little, as though in passion, though Dax knew better than to buy into that. More likely, she was just trying to get a bigger audience. “She humiliates you, denigrates you, reduces your life to games and trifles, peddles the luxury of hope when she knows perfectly well it won’t do you any good. She belittles everything you do, everything you are.” She spread her arms out to take in the growing audience of Terran workers, accusing them all. “All of this she does right before your eyes, but I’m still the one you call ‘tyrant’. I’m still the one you vilify. I’m the one you rise up to rebel against, when all I want is to protect you from people like her. Tell me, my dear Terran… my dear _Keiko_ … do you think that’s fair?”

Keiko bowed her head. “No, Intendant.”

It was only when she spat blood that Dax realised she’d been biting her lip again. It was pointless, of course; there wasn’t enough blood in her whole body to stem the tides of hatred this time. “Stop it!” she cried again. “Stop turning me into your scapegoat! Stop using me to hurt her! Stop!”

“Scapegoat?” the Intendant echoed. “What a crude term. I’m merely speaking the truth, my dear. You know as well as I do that I would do anything for you.”

“Then stop,” Dax repeated, as desperate as she was angry. “Stop this now.”

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe evenly, to keep her head clear and chase away the red fog of rage until they were safely back in the Intendant’s quarters. To hell with Jadzia and her benzocyatizine, she thought. To hell with everything. As soon as they were safely alone, with no innocents standing by to take the punishment for Dax’s mis-steps, she would let herself lose it. This time, whatever Joran wanted, Jadzia would gladly take.

As she tried to calm herself down, she felt a nervous tug on her shirt. She opened her eyes, and it took them a moment to focus on Keiko’s eyes, wide and uncomfortable. “Can I go back to work now?” she asked, plaintive and pitiful.

The Intendant’s hand was a dead weight on her shoulder. “Well?” she pressed, not giving Dax so much as a moment to respond to the question. “What do you say, my dear?”

“I say she’s your worker. The authority’s yours, not mine. You know that already. You know—”

“Yes, yes,” the Intendant agreed, all too readily. “But she asked you.”

Dax sighed. Of course she did. No doubt taking her cues from the Intendant, frightened and anticipating punishment if she didn’t behave a certain way. Did she realise, Dax wondered, that she wasn’t the one being toyed with at all? Did she realise that this was all for Dax’s benefit, that she was the game being played, that hers was the life-or-death reaction the Intendant was looking for? Probably not, and even if she did, it would probably make no difference; disobedience met death, regardless of the reason.

“Fine,” Dax said at last, surrendering with a heavy heart; she couldn’t fight the Intendant here, of course, so the best she could do was get out of here as quickly as possible, for all their sakes. “Go back to work, then, if that’s what you want. Go back to work and…” She looked down, feeling that she owed it to Keiko to at least meet her eyes as she condemned her to another lifetime of this hell. “Go,” she finished weakly, feeling the fight go out of her as she saw that precious hope die. “Just go.”

Keiko didn’t need telling twice; she waited just long enough for the Intendant to nod her acquiescence, then scurried away as quickly as her overworked legs would carry her. Dax watched, silent and sorrowful as she vanished into the milling throng of her fellow Terrans, then closed her eyes again as one of the Cardassian overseers set to work breaking up the gathering crowd.

The Intendant held her in place for a few minutes after that, keeping her down on her knees in front of the workers, letting them know that even her chosen favourite wasn’t above showing the proper respect. She waited, watching as they slowly but surely returned to their labours, making sure that there was no hint of insurgent muttering among them. Dax doubted she would hear any of the praise she so often craved, but she seemed satisfied enough that there was no open talk of dissent. Acceptance, Dax supposed, was at least a better option than outright rebellion.

When she was content, she hauled Dax to her feet, fingers digging into her arms. Dax let herself go limp, allowing the Intendant to drag her away, as unresisting as any of the Terran slaves who were so afraid for their lives. There wasn’t really that much difference between them, after all; Dax was afraid for their lives too.

So she waited, biding her time as the Intendant marched her through the station, practically pulling her along, as though worried that Dax would turn and run away if she let her go. She made use of all the things she’d picked up from Joran, unexpected tips and tricks that she hadn’t even realised she’d learned, sweet little distractions to hold the anger at bay until she could use it to its full effect. Little things, like digging her nails into the palm of her hand because she couldn’t risk pulling out the knife, biting on her lip where it was already split and sore to double the pain, chewing on the inside of her cheek until her whole mouth was pulsing in a dull throb, anything and everything she could think of to hone and polish the scream of rage, keeping it quiet but simmering, biding its time and biding her own.

As soon as they were back in her quarters, the Intendant threw her up against the nearest bulkhead. Dax smiled as her head snapped back, hard enough to make her teeth rattle.

“If you ever try to undermine me in front of my workers again…”

Without the least effort, Dax shrugged out of her hold, reversing their positions in an instant. The shock and disbelief on the Intendant’s face was almost more satisfying than the _crack_ as her bony shoulders hit the solid surface.

“The hell with that,” she retaliated, driving her forearm against her throat, hard enough to cut off her breathing. This time, when her body flushed with heat, she didn’t even bother to feel guilty. “If _you_ ever try to manipulate me like that again, your workers will be the least of your worries.”

The Intendant struggled, but Dax had the superior strength and height. Besides, she suspected the Intendant was not used to people standing up to her, much less actually using physical force. Well, outside of the bedroom, anyway, and certainly not without her express permission; she was used to playing games, toying with the idea of violence rather than actually experiencing what it could do, and that put Dax in a very powerful position. She was a fighter anyway, and right now she was a hurricane of pent-up anger and hatred and brutality. Pampered and spoiled and used to submission, the Intendant didn’t know what hit her.

Besides, she thought with a bitterness that only fuelled her rage, no doubt, anyone with the guts to even think of assaulting her like this had found themselves slaughtered before they got one foot in the door.

Maybe that was the fate that would meet her when this was done. There was no doubt in her mind that the Intendant would conveniently forget all of her so-called ‘affection’ the moment they were finished here, and it wouldn’t surprise her in the least if she found herself publicly flogged and executed after all. She thought briefly of Jadzia, stuck waiting in the Badlands, a helpless victim of her own inner Joran, and for a moment she felt guilty again. If she did die here, then that Dax was as good as dead too. Just another bloodstain on her hands. She sighed, then shrugged it off.

Was it really such a terrible price for ending this? Wasn’t there a part of Jadzia who deserved her fate just as surely as the Intendant deserved this? Maybe she should have thought about this sort of thing when she threw away everything that the Trill held sacred for some stupid love affair. Maybe she should have thought about the consequences of her actions when she’d chosen exile over her responsibility to the symbiont. It was all too easy to convince herself of that, blinded as she was by Joran’s violence. Right then, she didn’t care about Jadzia. She didn’t care about isoboramine or benzocyatizine or hallucinations; she didn’t care about anything. Right now, all she cared about was watching the Intendant writhe and choke.

For once, she didn’t fight it. She didn’t want to fight it. That hate would keep her alive through this; it would give her the strength to do what needed to be done, to stand up to the Intendant and make her position clear, to drive the point right through her heart if that was what it took. She didn’t just hear Joran’s voice now; for the first time, she _wanted_ to hear it. She wanted that hatred, wanted to think and feel and do terrible things, wanted to thrive on her own violent impulses. She wanted to hurt the Intendant more than she had ever wanted to hurt anyone in all her life, to inflict on her all the pain she had inflicted on her Terran slaves. She wanted to make her pay for using her, for turning her into a scapegoat, a mirror of evil to make her seem better, wanted to turn all that injustice back on her until she choked on it.

It was justice, she told herself. It was vindication, recompense for all the Terrans who had died under her watch, all the unwitting mercenaries who had been strung up as martyrs and pariahs to make their benevolent dictator seem more merciful. So what if she was listening to Joran for once? She what if she was indulging all his twisted thoughts and dark desires? Wasn’t it worth it for a righteous cause? Wasn’t she just using the gifts the Dax symbiont had given her?

But then, wasn’t it a little selfish too? She wanted to avenge the Terrans and their plight, yes, but was that really what this was about? Did she want to make the Intendant pay for frightening Keiko O’Brien, or did she want to make her pay for abusing Dax in front of her? Was it Keiko’s suffering that had cut so deep, or her own?

The truth was, what she really wanted, more than anything else, was to make the Intendant suffer the way she herself had suffered when she’d looked down at those haunted familiar eyes, eyes that she knew nearly as well as she knew Kira’s, to watch as they filled with tears and terror and stand by helpless as the Intendant used her to crush the hopes and dreams that had once lit up behind them. She wanted to abuse the Intendant as she’d abused her. The Intendant had thrown her down as a sacrifice, a paragon of all the awful things that she tried so hard to pretend were not her doing, and Dax wanted nothing more than to turn those things back on her now, drive them into her until she was the one begging for mercy.

Maybe the Intendant was right, she thought. Maybe this place was so twisted and terrible that the only way to survive in it was to become twisted and terrible as well.

The Intendant was smiling; Dax could feel the warmth radiating from her, the fervour of her own anger coupled with a very different kind of heat as Dax pressed up against her, hips against hips and lips against lips, violence seeping through the breath between them. It was just like her, Dax thought angrily, to find pleasure even in this. Even now, she was prideful and arrogant enough to think she was in control, to see Dax’s assault as some kind of perverse game. The thought ignited a similar heat in her belly too, and she responded by shoving the Intendant even harder against the bulkhead, forearm pressing hard enough to bruise and easing up only when the Intendant clawed at her arm.

“Well?” she managed when Dax gave her enough air to speak. “Do you actually intend to follow through on those adorable little threats of yours, or is this all just foreplay?” She bared her teeth, catching Dax’s lower lip, and Dax let her because the sting in the open cuts fuelled her fury. “I should probably warn you, I’m not feeling very playful right now.” She hissed as Dax slammed her back against the wall, then coughed raggedly. I don’t sleep with insurgents.”

“Don’t,” Dax snarled, and resumed her efforts to crush her larynx. “Don’t you dare put me in a position like that and then call me ‘insurgent’ just because I don’t dance to your tune. Don’t you dare treat me like one of your little Cardassian puppets. Don’t you dare!”

The Intendant whistled, or tried to, but Dax was cutting off too much of her breath to muster the sound; despite her feints at ambivalence and disdain, she was clearly impressed, tangibly aroused by Dax’s force and aggression, and perhaps a little by her blithe self-destructive courage. Maybe their little trip to Ore Processing hadn’t turned out the way she’d expected, but it had certainly brought out more of Joran than either of them could have anticipated, and Dax didn’t need Lela’s talents for reading people to know that the Intendant was thrown and thrilled in equal measure.

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” she shot back, and Dax could tell that the tremor in her voice had nothing to do with the brutal pressure against her windpipe. “Why, who are you to say anything at all? This is my station, in case you’ve forgotten, and you’re only here at all because I gave you permission to be.” That was true, but Dax did not acknowledge it. “From where I’m standing, my dear, I think I should be the one telling you what you can and cannot dare.”

Dax gave an animalistic growl and slammed her against the bulkhead once more. The Intendant was right, at least for the most part; Terok Nor belonged to her, and the fact was that if she’d simply said the word, Dax would have been dead long before they reached this point. She was here at her mercy, just like Keiko and the other Terrans, probably like everyone else who had ever set foot on the station. She was just as much a slave as any damned worker, and realising that just made her all the more furious.

Curzon would never have let himself get cornered like this; he would have beaten the Intendant to a pulp the moment she’d issued her first veiled threat. Torias, ever the charmer, would have sweet-talked his way out of it, smiled and flattered her until she really had been smitten with him. Audrid would have tried a tactful approach at first, then cut her losses and run. Emony and Lela would never have agreed to come here in the first place. Only Tobin would have let it get to this point without a fight; only he would have been as slow and stupid as Jadzia was, the two of them as hopeless as each other, socially inept scientists struggling in a world that wanted to abuse them. But then, Tobin didn’t have Joran inside him, or Curzon or Emony, or the others. He just had Lela, and even she was no match for that painful shyness of his, so at least he had the excuse of only having one past life to support him.

Jadzia didn’t have that excuse. She had Tobin and Lela, she had Curzon and Emony and Audrid and Torias. She had all six of them, plus Jadzia to make seven… and, of course, the unwanted eighth.

Joran, with all his anger, all his rage and hate and violence. Joran, with all those terrible things inside of him, those awful feelings that Dax had fought so hard to resist and choke down. Joran, with his twisted influence, the hunger and the heat that had left her so frightened. Joran, beating like a second heartbeat in her chest, rushing like blood through her veins, turning her fist to solid steel as she raised it. Joran, who laughed as the Intendant’s head snapped back again and again and again.

The Intendant smiled as she recovered herself, and Dax felt the pressure in her throat as she coughed. She wasn’t bleeding, and that was all the reason Dax needed to keep striking her, keep lashing out, to do to her what she did to everyone else who crossed her path, to use her and abuse her and destroy her, until the pain was all she could feel and all she knew.

She was more than angry now, more than violent, and it wasn’t just Joran this time. It was Jadzia too, and Curzon, and all the rest of them; it was _Dax_ , and for the first time since Joran’s memories awoke in her, she felt like he was as much a part of her as all the others. For the first time, he wasn’t some separate entity, a dissociated consciousness trying to twist her into something she didn’t want, but a part of her, truly, as whole and complete and fundamental as any of the others. He was giving her something now, something new and different, not a nightmare filled with blood and bones and death and decay or a surge of arousal in the same instant she was repulsed; for the first time, they were on the same side, and when he fed her with all that anger and hatred, it wasn’t just emotion he was feeding her but strength as well, the courage and the fortitude to do what was right. He was feeding her, yes, just like he always did, but this time the fire he was fuelling came as much from Jadzia as from himself.

She felt _joined_. For the first time since Joran had surfaced, the violence was shared equally between them, and when she slammed the Intendant into the bulkhead again, releasing her throat just so she could use both fists to hit her with, for the first time it felt right.

The Intendant’s legs gave out long before her smile did, and that was reason enough for Dax to keep going. She would wipe that self-satisfied smile off her face if it was the last thing she did, and to hell with the punishment. For the first time, she understood how Jadzia must have felt when she chose exile, how it must have felt to realise that the fire inside her, the passion and the power, was worth more than the continued life of the symbiont, worth more than anything she could imagine, that it was the most important thing in the world.

Dax felt that way now, beating away at the Intendant, fists turning grazed and raw all over again until she had no idea whose blood was whose. She didn’t think about the symbiont inside her, didn’t think about Curzon or Torias or even Joran; all she could think about was justice and vengeance and seeing this thing through. If she died here, if the symbiont died with her, then they would both die proud.

With nothing to hold her upright, the Intendant slid down to the floor. Undeterred, Dax hauled her back up again, letting her sway in place for a moment or two before striking her again. She was bleeding quite profusely now, lines of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth and flowing freely from her nose, and Dax felt her own blood burn even hotter at the sight; the part of her that was Joran thought of licking the blood from her face, staking a claim, but Jadzia’s weaker stomach won out and together they settled for simply striking another staggering blow.

She wasn’t after regret, a plea for mercy or a heartfelt apology. Not now. She had no delusions of remorse or reconciliation, and she sure as hell didn’t expect the Intendant to suddenly see the light just because she was seeing stars. She wasn’t that deluded and she wasn’t that damn stupid. All she wanted was to tear that smile from her lips.

The Intendant mustered a laugh when Dax paused to catch her breath, crawling up the wall and clinging to its surface to keep her upright. “Tiring already?”

“Shut up!” Dax roared, drawing back to deliver another blow. “Shut up, or I swear to your damned Prophets I will—”

“You’ll what?” the Intendant countered, breathless and bloodied but still smiling. “Kill me? Please.” She licked her lips, swallowing blood. “You don’t have the stomach to try. And even if you did, we both know it would turn out rather more unpleasantly for you than for me.”

“Maybe,” Dax conceded; the world around her was edged with red and black, and she couldn’t think clearly. She felt almost like she was the one who’d been beaten, not the Intendant. “But at least those people would be free of you. At least I’d achieve that much.”

“And who’s to say my replacement wouldn’t be even worse?” the Intendant asked.

It was a fair question, Dax had to admit, but she was far beyond thinking rationally. “Anyone is better than you,” she said, breath rattling in her chest. “Anyone.”

The Intendant barked a laugh, loud and wet. Dax, naturally, retaliated by punching her squarely in the mouth. It didn’t deter her, of course, but it gave Dax a little satisfaction to watch her head snap back again.

“How naive,” she chuckled as she righted herself, shaking her head and ignoring the fresh trickle of blood. “Why do you care about them, anyway? They’re not your people.”

“But they are still _people_ ,” Dax replied, hearing and hating the crack in her voice. “They’re still living and breathing and thinking and feeling _people_. Don’t you understand that? Is there even a tiny piece of you that can comprehend what it means?”

All of a sudden, she was the one reeling and tasting blood as the Intendant swung and returned the assault with a sharp, head-spinning blow to the side of her face. “Be careful,” she warned, not waiting for Dax to recover. “My stomach isn’t as weak as yours, and I don’t make threats unless I plan to see them through.”

“You’d kill me for questioning you?” Dax demanded.

The Intendant shrugged, as though a life wasn’t worth more than that careless dismissal. “I’ve killed far more important people for far less.”

Dax had no doubt that was true, but the words still struck hard. Not quite as hard as the Intendant, though, who wasted no time before lashing out with another brutal backhand. The blow was harder and more calculated than the last, and when the stars stopped spinning around her head, all Dax could see was Keiko O’Brien’s terrified face.

“What did you think I was going to do?” she cried, rearing back to deliver a counterstrike of her own. The Intendant, more alert now, parried it effortlessly and shoved Dax backwards with surprising strength. “Did you really think I’d just stand back and let you use me like that in front of…” She closed her eyes, pushed Keiko’s face out of her mind. “…in front of all those Terrans?”

“Why not?” the Intendant shot back, ready for her. “You always did before.”

Dax’s breath hitched, catching in her throat, but before she had the chance to recover and defend herself and her out-of-character decisions, the Intendant swung again, clocking her square in the jaw. This time, instead of stars, Dax saw nothing but black, and when her vision cleared again, she was sprawled on the floor, lying flat on her back.

“But then…” the Intendant went on, eyes glowing, “you’re not really _you_.” Her face turned to steel, harder and more deadly than her fists. “Are you?”

In spite of the blood filling it, Dax’s mouth went suddenly dry. “What are you tal—”

She was cut off with ruthless efficiency by a heavy-heeled boot planted against her throat. “Hush now. Lies don’t become you, my dear. And I think we’re beyond the point of pretences, don’t you? Now, you can keep trying and failing to convince me that you are who you say you are, while I slowly but surely crush the life out of you… or you can give up this silly little deception, and I’ll let you live long enough to leave.”

Dax choked around the point of her heel. “Garak…?”

“Please.” The Intendant huffed, but at least had the dignity to remove her foot. “I don’t need that usurper to tell me anything. You underestimate my intelligence, dear. And you overestimate your own.”

Maybe that was true, Dax thought bitterly. Maybe she really did think she was better than she was. Maybe she really did believe Jadzia when she told her how blinded the Intendant was by her own ego. Maybe. But if so, it made no difference now; what was done was done, and all she could do was try not to reel too hard. She might be down, but she wasn’t out yet. Not while she still had some fight left in her.

“How long?” she asked, when she could breathe again. “How long have you known?” The Intendant just smiled again, so Dax lurched back to her feet, taking her by the collar and shaking her. “ _How long_?”

The Intendant just stood there, unaffected by her precarious position. She didn’t react at all as Dax shook her again, though she made no effort to pull free. Maybe she just didn’t see the point, or maybe she enjoyed seeing Dax waste what little energy she had left. Dax was weak and breathing raggedly; even she wasn’t stupid enough to believe she could actually do any damage now.

“There you go again,” the Intendant sighed as Dax began to flag and wane. “Forgetting your place, just like one of those stinking Terrans.” She chuckled, and at last pulled herself free from Dax’s hold, effortless and lazy. “That’s one thing the two of you have in common. But make no mistake, my sweet deluded Trill: it’s the only thing. You’re not nearly as convincing as you imagine you are.”

Dax swore, willing herself not to lose Joran’s strength now, feeding on his hunger and his hate to keep her limbs from trembling. “So why am I still here?” she asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” The Intendant rolled her shoulders, licking blood from the wounds on her face, features twitching with the threat of doing the same to Dax’s. “You amuse me.”

“I’m not here for your amusement!” Dax shouted, and lashed out again, a blind and sloppy blow that the Intendant easily ducked. “I’m not here to be your puppet!”

“Yes, you are.” As quick as a flash, the Intendant struck out with her foot, catching Dax right below the knees and sending her crashing back down to the floor. “That’s exactly why you’re here. You’re here because you needed something from me. For _her_ , no doubt.” She smiled, standing over Dax, legs spread on either side of her face. “I imagine she needs it desperately, or she would have come for it herself. Nothing stops that one when she has her mind set on something…”

Dax tried to sit up, but the Intendant placed a foot on her chest, increasing the pressure until it hurt; still, it was better than the alternative, and she was just thankful she could still breathe. She could feel the anger bubbling under the surface, feeling all the more justified with every moment that passed, though her body lacked the strength to make any use of it.

It was a pity, she thought; if she could just summon a little more, she would let Joran loose with everything he had, anger and hate and violence, everything he’d poured into her and a little of her own as well. The Intendant deserved all their wrath, and more besides. Jadzia hated her now, too, and it didn’t matter how much she looked like Kira. She was nothing like Kira, nothing like anyone Dax had ever met, and more than anything in the world she wanted to get back up and punch her again and again, until she stopped smiling completely.

“Listen to me,” the Intendant said, bending over at the waist so she could get a closer look at the hatred on Dax’s face. “You’ll get your benzocyatizine. I’m a woman of my word, and I have standards to maintain. Besides, I have a particular fondness for you… well, for _her_ , anyway, and if I’m going to see her dead, it’ll be by my hand, not because of some biochemical Trill nonsense.” She shook her head, seeming almost nostalgic for a moment or two, before she caught herself and hardened her features. “She deserves better than that. And I will not allow her to be undone by your ineptitude.”

Somewhat taken aback by how personally the Intendant seemed to feel Jadzia’s suffering, Dax could only nod. “Thank you,” she croaked, hating the way the gratitude stuck to her tongue.

“Don’t thank me,” the Intendant said, very seriously. “I’m not doing this for your benefit. I’m not even doing it for hers, though I’m sure she’ll thank me profusely enough the next she comes crawling back from whatever hole you’re hiding her in.” Dax bit her split lip to keep from pointing out that that wasn’t very likely. Ignoring her, the Intendant pressed her boot a little harder into her ribs. “I’m doing it because I can still use you.”

Dax opened her mouth to respond, and the Intendant lifted her boot for just long enough to press it between her lips instead, effectually gagging her. She held it there for a moment or two, until she was certain Dax wouldn’t try and say anything, then withdrew and returned it to its former place on her chest. Dax grimaced at the pressure, and idly wondered if the Intendant would break her ribs if she pushed her hard enough; though Joran shivered at the thought, enticed, Jadzia decided not to put it to the test.

“Now, now,” the Intendant said, cloying and malicious. “You had your chance to speak. My beautiful face is still bleeding from all the talking I let you do.” She shook her head, far more upset by the damage to her appearance than to her body. “This is what happens when I show any compassion,” she went on, angry and frustrated. “Every time. You’re no better than Benjamin Sisko or that traitor from your side who looks like me. You’re no better than any of them, and if I wasn’t such a soft heart, I’d…” She trailed off, seeming to catch herself. “But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that again. Do you?”

“Not really,” Dax said; her lungs were sore, but she ignored them. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

“Of course you don’t,” the Intendant agreed. “No doubt you’re just as sick of me as I am of you. But you will, whether you want to or not.” Her expression turned hard, dangerous, and Dax recognised the authority figure that she played for the Terrans overpowering her vanity for a moment. “I’ll let you stay here until your precious cargo arrives. Then you will give me the payment I’m due, take the goods you paid for, climb back into your ship, and leave me and my station alone. Do we have an understanding?”

Dax shook her head, feeling dizzy. “Not really,” she admitted. “Why are you so determined to get your payment? It’s not like you still want me running this place by your side. So why should you care about how dark my dreams and my fantasies are?”

The Intendant shrugged. “Because it will make you suffer to tell me,” she said, quite simply. “And after you betrayed my trust so completely, I think I deserve to see you suffer.”

Dax couldn’t help thinking that it wouldn’t make her suffer nearly as much as either of them had expected. She was still running on anger and adrenaline, still fuelled as much by Joran’s psychopathic rage as by Jadzia’s righteous fury, and her synapses still crackled and snapped with the newly forged connection, the whisper of understanding between them.

She wasn’t so afraid of him now, and for as long as she could cling to her own sense of justice, knowing as she did now that this situation warranted every iota of rage she or he could spare, she was not afraid of losing herself to him. Not when the cause was right, not when the anger was justified. Now when she was angry for the right reasons and violent in the right way. Truthfully, there was a part of her — and a part of Jadzia herself, as much as any of the others — that couldn’t help thinking, even if she did lose herself completely, there were far less deserving victims than the Intendant.

It frightened her to think that way, but she found that she couldn’t bring herself to care very much. It was new, different, but it wasn’t unheard of; didn’t Curzon always use his fists more than his brains? Didn’t Emony always pour out her frustrations through gruelling workouts, driving her body to the point of collapse to keep from dwelling on the things that upset her? Didn’t they all, in one way or another, lose themselves to flights of ill-advised temper, throwing punches when they shouldn’t and failing to hold their tongue when they should? Was this really so different?

Maybe she really was letting Joran’s influence guide her too much right now; maybe she really was indulging him in a way she shouldn’t. It was a dangerous tightrope, she knew, a thin line between letting his anger feed her and letting it consume her entirely, and though she didn’t think she’d crossed that line just yet, there was some small corner of her that knew it was still a very real danger.

But then, wasn’t it enough to know that? Wasn’t it enough to be aware, to see the line shimmering in front of her when she felt the anger boiling? Wasn’t that enough to keep her from crossing it? She didn’t know, and a part of her understood that she probably never would.

She couldn’t dwell on that now, though. She couldn’t think about the risk to herself, to her morality or her mind, or whether she was strong enough to bear it. If she thought about it, she would expose herself to doubt. She would cast Joran away like she always did when he exerted himself, and she would lose all the strength and power he was giving her. He was about the only thing keeping her going right now, the only thing giving her the confidence to face down the Intendant, to hold her head up and stand her ground and be the Dax that would have made Curzon proud. Joran was the only thing keeping her here, the only thing keeping her from yielding entirely, from letting herself be pulled under and drowned by this terrible place, this terrible universe, this terrible Kira—

 _No,_ she reminded herself. _Not Kira._ Just like that torn-down soul down in Ore Processing was not Keiko O’Brien, the foul creature standing above her now was not Kira Nerys. Whatever face she had, whatever voice she used, she was not Kira, and she never would be. Dax had to remember that. She had to cling to herself, and only herself. And if that meant clinging to Joran as well, then so be it.

“So, then…” the Intendant purred, voice so sweet that Dax felt a little sick. “Do you want to spend the rest of your stay here in a holding cell or between my sheets?”

Dax stared up at her, thrown by the offer. “You’re giving me the choice?”

“I didn’t say that, now, did I?” the Intendant corrected her with a cruel smile. “I just asked which you wanted. I didn’t say you’d get it.”

As difficult as it was to think with a heel jammed between her ribs, it was easy enough to see that the question was a trap, just like everything else that came out of the Intendant’s mouth. She was testing her, baiting her, and Dax knew perfectly well that neither answer would be acceptable; Dax supposed nothing she could possibly say at this point would, and she supposed she should be glad of that, thankful that the burden of trying to please her — of trying to _entertain_ her — was finally off her shoulders.

The truth was, she’d sooner take the holding cell; it would be quiet, isolated and solitary, and it wasn’t just the part of Dax that felt sick every time she looked at the Intendant that would welcome that. The part of her that still seethed with Joran’s festering rage would welcome it too, embracing the opportunity to be locked up where she couldn’t hurt anyone, still clinging to the self-control that so often sent her running down to the holosuite.

Saying it, of course, would risk offending the Intendant, and if she did that she knew she would end up with far worse than a few bruised ribs and a soreness in her throat. But then, if she picked the other option, and the Intendant caught even the faint wisp of a lie, that would be far worse. It was one thing to prefer a prison cell to a bedchamber, but it was another thing entirely to pretend that wasn’t the case.

In the end, she gave up. If she was going to be punished no matter what she said, let her at least get punished for calling her out. “Does it really matter what I want?” she demanded. “You’ll do what you want with me either way. If you want to sleep with me, you can do it just as easily in a holding cell—”

“Oh yes,” the Intendant agreed with a lascivious smile. “I’m sure we could have a lot of fun with those force fields…”

Dax ignored her. “—and if you want me locked up tight and secure, we both know you could do that just as well here.” She looked up, forcing her features to stone. “Either way, we both know you’ll take whatever the hell you want from me, so why should I care what surroundings you choose for the task?”

The Intendant shrugged. “I suppose you shouldn’t,” she admitted with a shrug. “I just wanted to know what you’d prefer. Is it such a terrible thing to want to know what you’re thinking?”

“Everything you do is a terrible thing,” Dax said, earning herself another sharp stab of the Intendant’s heel; she took this one with a smile, though, and didn’t relent. “I don’t care. I’m done playing your games, and I’m done letting you use me. Those poor people…”

She shook her head, struck once again by the vision of Keiko’s face; would she ever be able to look Chief O’Brien in the eye again after what she’d seen here? It took everything she had to blink back the tears, to fight off the urge to curl up in a ball and weep for the life that woman would never know, the love and the husband and the sheer joy of sharing herself with others.

It took everything she had not to close her eyes and weep for the rest of them too, the nameless and the faceless, people she knew and people she didn’t, all those Terrans doomed to have their very existences stunted and reduced to nothing, and all for the sake of this woman and her ego.

Joran was right, she thought, and this time not even Curzon disagreed. Sometimes, the only answer was to indulge in a little bit of violence and a whole lot of hate.

“I don’t care,” she said again, strong and defiant. “Do what you want with me. I’m finished.”

The Intendant hauled her to her feet, almost yanking her arms out of their sockets. “Not yet,” she said, raising her fist. “But you will be.”


	18. Chapter 18

When she was done beating her to within an inch of her life, the Intendant opted for the holding cell.

Dax was admittedly somewhat surprised by the decision; it wasn’t like the Intendant to make things easy for her, and she’d been almost certain that she’d choose to tie her to the bed for the rest of her time here. It seemed like the sort of sordid thing she would do, and so she was more than a little relieved to find that that wasn’t case. A gesture of mercy, perhaps, in payment for the pleasure she’d given, or else a momentary flicker of kindness. Whatever the reason, Dax had no intention of asking.

Notwithstanding the allure of having a private place to lick her wounds and recover, the holding cell was as close to freedom as she could possibly hope for. Sure, it was a whole lot more cramped than the Intendant’s lush quarters, but it was peaceful and quiet, and by that point she would have given almost anything for a few minutes to herself. After the last couple of days spent watching her back, to say nothing of certain other parts that were still sore, solitary confinement was almost more than she could hope for.

Either by some obscene oversight, or else by pre-meditated design, the Intendant did not confiscate her knife — well, Jadzia’s knife, anyway. Maybe she thought it would serve as a sobering reminder of the woman whose life she’d claimed to share, the Jadzia Dax she had pretended to be and all the things she’d done in her name. Maybe she thought it would serve some kind of hubristic point, or maybe she just wanted to make it inescapably clear that she was not afraid of Dax, that she could not hurt her now no matter how well-armed she was. Confinement was confinement, after all, and the keenest blade in the galaxy was just as useless as the bluntest in a room with only one occupant.

Dax didn’t particularly care about the Intendant’s reasoning, or how useless the knife was with no-one there to us it on. All she cared about was that it was still with her, still safely strapped to her hip in its sheath, still available. It was there, and that meant she could use it, could slash at her palms or reopen the cuts between her ribs, could do any one of a thousand things if she needed to feel its sting to keep herself sane.

For a few long hours after she was thrown into the cell, she did not even have the strength to pull the weapon out at all, but just knowing it was there, feeling the weight against her thigh was enough to strengthen her until she could. It was there. It was there, and it was hers, and if Joran wasn’t satisfied, she would be able to use it just like she had before. She was beaten, bruised and bloodied, locked up in a holding cell, exposed and vilified, but as long as she had Jadzia’s knife, she was safe.

As far as she could tell, the Intendant kept her true identity carefully under wraps. At the very least, Dax found that there was a marked lack of curious Cardassians and Klingons peeking into her cell in search of the parallel-universe freak-show. There wasn’t much traffic past her cell at all, really. Whatever friends Jadzia might have made on this station didn’t seem particularly quick to come and pay their respects now that she’d actively crossed the Intendant. Dax didn’t much care about that, either; it was enough that she was mostly left alone, enough that nobody seemed to think of her at all, much less stop by to stare. It was enough that ‘solitary confinement’ actually meant being solitary, at least for the most part. That gave her strength too; there was solace in solitude.

She did have one visitor, however.

At first, she almost didn’t recognise him. He looked almost worse than she felt, badly beaten with one eye swollen shut and the other barely half-open. When he opened his mouth, it was with obvious difficulty; his jaw was almost as badly swollen as his eye, no doubt broken, and he was clutching his chest in a way that suggested his ribs had suffered a similar fate. The look on his face, even through the damage, was nothing short of murderous, and even though Dax knew that she was perfectly safe behind the holding cell’s force field, she still found herself stumbling a cautious step back.

“Garak?”

“You just had to drag me down with you, didn’t you?”

The words, and the dramatic sigh that went with them, seemed to cause him a great deal of pain, and Dax winced in sympathy as he grimaced and steadied himself against the nearest wall.

For a long moment, she wasn’t sure what he meant. She was still reeling from the sight of him, the obvious pain he was in and the devastation that had been done to him, no doubt at his mistress’s tender hand. Briefly, she wondered why he wasn’t resting; on the Deep Space Nine she knew, Julian would have confined him to the infirmary until he had healed at least a little, but she supposed on this version of Terok Nor nobody cared very much about one battered Cardassian.

She was just about to ask him what had happened, if it really was the Intendant who had assaulted him and why, when her sluggish brain caught up with the rest of her and realised the truth of it.

“Oh,” she said, voicing the realisation aloud so that he wouldn’t have to strain himself by explaining it to her. “She found out you knew about me.”

“Of course she did,” he grated bitterly. “You told her.”

For a moment, she didn’t remember; she was so thrown by what she was seeing, the sympathetic pain in her own body pulsing in full force, but when the memory struck, it did so with all the force of a fresh new blow.

“I did…” she blurted out, dropping her head into her hands. “I did. I’m so sorry, I…” But how could she apologise when she hadn’t even realised what she was doing when she did it? “She figured out who I was, so naturally I just assumed you…”

“Oh, I know exactly what you assumed.” He pointed humourlessly to his face. “She made that perfectly clear, thank you.”

Dax winced again. “I’m sorry, Garak. I really am. I just… I didn’t… I didn’t think…”

“No,” he replied, and it was more than pain turning his voice coarse. “You stupid girl. You didn’t think at all, did you?”

“She cornered me!” Dax cried; her own jaw ached too. “She caught me off-guard and she threw it at me, and I just… what was I supposed to do?”

“You could start by not immediately pointing your grubby little fingers at me,” he shot back furiously. “Did you not think for even a moment that I might keep my word? Did you not think that I might have a single shred of honesty or integrity in me?” He chuckled, self-deprecating and entirely without humour, and shook his head. “Well, I suppose you have me there.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, with sincerity. “If I’d thought for a second she’d go after you… if I’d just thought for a second at all…”

“I suppose, if you’d thought for a second at all, you wouldn’t be here in the first place, would you?”

“I suppose not,” Dax sighed.

He sighed too, sounding deeply weary, pain tangible in the hoarseness of his voice and the squint of his one good eye; for a moment, he seemed almost to feel sorry for her, and seeing a vestige of sympathy in a face so deformed and brutalised made Dax recoil.

“I do hope she’s worth all this, my dear,” he said sadly. “But from my experience with the loud-mouthed little harlot, I’m afraid you’ll find she’s not.”

Dax didn’t know whether he was talking about the Intendant or Jadzia, and frankly she didn’t want to.

“Did you come here for an apology?” she asked, feeling just as battered and worn down as he looked. “Because if that’s why you’re here, you’re welcome to it. I really am sorry, and I never meant—”

“That’s comforting,” he remarked wryly, cutting her off. “But no, that’s not why I’m here. Honestly, I just thought you might want to see the consequences of your thoughtlessness. I don’t doubt for a moment that you didn’t mean to throw me to the she-wolf. From what I’ve seen of the charming people from your side, nobody there is capable of malicious intent, even when it’s frankly well earned.” He shook his head, grimaced in discomfort, then pressed on with his trademark poise. “But I’m afraid your self-righteousness offers very little comfort to my poor face.”

Dax palmed Jadzia’s knife, pressing down on the handle. She didn’t pull it out, didn’t tempt herself with the blade, but breathed deep of the reminder that she could. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Garak said hotly, annoyed by her repetition. “I’m not asking you to be sorry. You silly thing! Can’t you see past that perfect little world you come from and look at what you’ve done?” Dax shook her head, wishing that he would just go away and leave her alone. “I’m here as a warning, you stupid child. I’m here to remind you of what happens when you don’t think before you speak. If you don’t start using that empty little head of yours, she’ll eat you alive and leave you with all your senses still intact as you rot away inside her.”

The mental image turned Dax’s stomach, but she wouldn’t let that show. “Thank you for the advice,” she said instead, hollow and dismissive.

Apparently sensing that his supposed chivalry was lost on her, Garak shrugged. “Besides, you’re wasting your energies feeling sorry for me,” he pointed out. “Thanks to you, she’s in a dreadful mood, and it’s not the likes of me or you that either of us need to worry about.”

“What do you mean?” Dax asked.

“You really don’t pay any attention at all, do you?” He laughed, shrugging off the obvious pain. “Just think of those poor Terrans, my dear. They always get the worst of her when she feels like she’s been ‘betrayed’, and if you think she won’t take your treachery out on them just because they’re innocent, you’re even more hopeless than I thought you were.”

There was no hiding the lurch in her stomach this time, and Dax swallowed convulsively to try and settle it. She couldn’t speak, but a single glance at Garak’s face made it clear he that didn’t really expect her to. He wasn’t here to get a rise out of her, she could tell; he was just here to show off the depth of suffering she had unwittingly inflicted. She wasn’t sure if he’d heard about what had happened in Ore Processing, but given how impossible it was to keep secrets in this place, and how monumentally she’d failed to keep secrets from him specifically, she would have been rather surprised if he hadn’t.

It was hard to read the intention in a face as badly beaten as his was just then, but she didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d chosen his words very carefully. Maybe they’d even been planted by the Intendant herself; Dax certainly wouldn’t put it past her to spare his life on the proviso that he do her a favour or two in return. After all, shovelling an extra layer of guilt onto the boss’s latest pet project was a small price to pay for being allowed to see another day.

Of course, that way lay paranoia, and she forced the thought out of her head. Would it make any difference to her situation even if he was here at her behest? His point was still a good one, if unwanted, and what good would it do her, or the Terrans, if she dismissed it just because it happened to come from a despicable source? She could only focus on the words themselves, and she didn’t have the strength to bear their weight and worry about where they might have come from at the same time. The only thing she could do about it was try to meet Garak’s one-eyed gaze without flinching.

“From what I’ve seen,” she said, “they get the worst of her all the time. I don’t imagine she needs much of an excuse to take things out on them.”

“Maybe not,” Garak conceded quietly. “But you’ve certainly not helped matters any, have you?” He shook his head, disbelief evident even in the ravages of his face. “I would love to know what your delightful counterpart was thinking when she sent you out here in her place. She must have realised how much trouble you’d get into. She must have thought…” He laughed out loud, obviously deeply amused by his own train of thought. “But then, maybe that’s the problem with you both. Would it be fair to assume that she probably wasn’t thinking either?”

Dax rolled her eyes, feeling a pulse of pain in her skull, a revenant from her own beating. “Probably not,” she conceded with a wince.

Garak chuckled again, still a little hoarse. “I suppose that’s one thing the two of you have in common,” he remarked. “You’re both stupid and idealistic imbeciles.”

Dax sighed. She thought about telling him everything, about Jadzia’s hallucinations and how frightened she was, how Dax couldn’t possibly stand idly by and watch as she surrendered to them, how personal it was and how deeply she still felt the pull of it. It wasn’t any of his business, of course, but a part of her couldn’t help wondering if it might dull the ache a little just to get it all out in the open.

Probably not, she thought with a sigh. Even if it did ease the pain of her thoughts, the pain in her body and in his would remain, and once he was gone they’d all be right back where they started.

Besides, talking about it wouldn’t undo anything, would it? It wouldn’t reverse the damage that had been done to any of them, to Jadzia or herself or Garak. It wouldn’t take back the injuries he’d suffered because of her big mouth, and it wouldn’t get her out of this cell. It sure as hell wouldn’t help any of the nameless Terrans facing the Intendant’s wrath because she was too loud and too stupid to keep a secret. What good would it do to share her troubles? Her heart might be lighter, but the rest of her would be just as heavy as it was now. Maybe even more so, coupled with the guilt of feeling better when so many people were still in danger because of her.

No. Spilling her guts to him wouldn’t do anyone any good. So, instead of sharing, she just sighed and turned her back to him, staring at the wall to keep from looking at the bruises on his face.

“Thank you for visiting,” she said, much more harshly than she’d meant. “It’s always a pleasure, Garak. Don’t let the force field hit you on the way out.”

At the very corner of her peripheral vision, she saw the flurry of motion as he held up a hand, though whether it was in surrender or dismissal, she couldn’t tell. “All right, then,” he said with another pained sigh. “I know when I’m not welcome. Silly me, thinking that you might have liked a bit of companionship during your incarceration. They do say misery loves company…”

“Not here,” Dax said. She could feel his words, and the implications behind them, scratching underneath her skin, itches that she couldn’t reach and the weight of guilt so much heavier than all the blood and bruises in a dozen universes. “Goodbye, Garak.”

She turned around just in time to see him lower into a deep and exaggerated bow. “As you wish,” he said, and limped away.

As soon as he was gone, she pulled out Jadzia’s knife.

She had managed to hold herself back from actually using it until now, at first because she was in too much pain and then because she was just too tired, but all that changed now. She could still feel the look on his face, the pain overshadowed by disgust, the swollen bruise making his one eye useless even as the other grew keener. And then, of course, there were his words; it was enough of a struggle already, trying to banish the image of Keiko O’Brien, of all those poor Terrans, trying to remember that they weren’t her people, that she wasn’t responsible for them, that their suffering wasn’t her doing, that none of this was truly her fault. It was enough of a struggle to try and make herself believe that, without a loud-mouthed Cardassian telling her that it was her fault after all, that their pain was on her head.

The guilt churned like acid in her stomach, like heartburn in her chest, like the distant and dizzied memory of a hangover, her whole body turned into something unpleasant, something bitter and hard to keep down, and when she finally allowed herself to draw the knife across her palm it was by raw instinct. It wasn’t to cast off Joran’s influence this time, nor was it to keep the anger and the violence at bay. Quite the opposite, in fact; this was the only violence she could get hold of in this tiny little cell, and she gulped it down like a dying man in need of water. The sharp sting felt like a kind of penance as the blood welled up instantly in the lines of her skin, so enticing and so intoxicating. She took the pain now because she wanted it, not because she needed it, and that tiny difference was everything.

If Keiko died here, it would be her fault. If the Intendant recognised the way Dax had looked at her, if she realised there was a connection there and took her life in some kind of twisted vengeance, it would all be on Dax’s shoulders. She was the one who had failed to play the part written for her, and she was the one who had made the Intendant angry; perhaps the Intendant really had singled out Keiko by pure coincidence, but Dax was the one who had ensured she would remember her face and her name. If the Intendant did choose to take out her frustrations on Keiko, like Garak had warned she might, the blood would be on Dax’s hands as clearly and completely as if she was the one giving the order.

She couldn’t blame Joran for that. She wanted to; more than anything in the world she wanted to blame him for all of this. So desperately, she wanted it to be his fault that she was stuck here in this holding cell, with her cover blown and her patience all burned out, but the simple fact was that it wasn’t. It wasn’t his fault that she couldn’t play this universe’s Jadzia Dax well enough to convince the Intendant, or even Garak. It wasn’t his fault that she had refused to play the Intendant’s game, or that she had brought unwitting attention to Keiko O’Brien— well, Keiko _Ishikawa_ , she supposed, though the distinction didn’t really help. It wasn’t his fault that she had blurted out Garak’s name, selling out his knowledge without even thinking of the potential repercussions when the Intendant realised he’d kept the information back from her.

It wasn’t even really his fault that she had succumbed to his influence at last, that she had opened herself to all the violence he had in him, that she had taken him in and welcomed him and let him feed her with his temper and his rage. It wasn’t his fault that she’d poured all of it out on the Intendant; though it had come from him, she was the one who had taken it, and for once it was by her own free will.

None of it was Joran’s fault. Failure after failure, and every one all her own.

Furious, she balled her fist, squeezing the blade of the knife with her fingers and pressing the serrated edge deeper into her palm. This was her doing as well, she noted; there was no Joran in the rage that bubbled up inside of her this time. It felt pure, familiar; it felt like herself. There was no loss of control here, no tidal wave of anger and fear, his power and her weakness, nothing at all but the plain and simple need to punish herself for her own failures.

She could still feel him, of course, and she could tell that there was a part of him feeding those feelings, just as Curzon fed her delusions about her alcohol tolerance or Emony pushed her past her breaking point when she worked out. But he wasn’t forcing her hand, wasn’t driving himself into her, and when she squeezed the blade again, it wasn’t through fear of what would happen if she didn’t, but simply because she wanted to.

At last, she felt like he was a part of her, in harmony with herself. He was helping her, not forcing her, and that made all the difference. Of course she was feeling terrible things right now, but that was because this place was terrible, not because he was. She had done terrible things here, too, and though she was sure she could still blame him for no small number of them, the volume of failure that was her own doing had risen so far beyond that, it seemed almost pointless to hate him for silly little slips. Right now, she had done far more damage than he had, and that fact helped her to harness his feelings in a way that felt almost natural, a way that felt intuitive, not so different at all to the way she harnessed Curzon or Emony or any of the others. For the first time, she felt like they were really joined, like they all were, all eight of them. It felt… symbiotic.

Well, she supposed, at the very least it was one less thing to worry about. Blood dripped silently to the floor when she released her death-grip on the knife, switching to her other hand and cleaning off the blade on Jadzia’s torn-up shirt. It felt fitting, the darkness smearing the fabric, a stain to mark Jadzia as much as Dax. When she was finished with it, she slipped the knife back into its sheath at her hip, taking the same old comfort from its familiar weight and the way it shifted against her thigh when she moved.

She remembered the way Jadzia had looked at the weapon, and smiled to herself. _‘I never fail a mission as long as I’ve got it by my side’_ , she’d said as she handed it over. Dax’s outlook wasn’t quite so promising, but she appreciated the thought just the same, and as she leaned against the back wall, the sigh that left her lips was as much fondness as frustration.

It was by pure instinct that she closed her eyes, sliding down to sit on the cold floor, arms folded over her knees and chin resting on them. Her mind was a maelstrom, a swirling vortex of other people’s suffering, and she hated it, but she hated far more that it felt almost good. After so long spent fighting her own thoughts, waging war after war inside herself, rebelling against everything they’d ever known, every thought and feeling and idea, against everything she was, resisting the seductive little whisper telling her to become something else, to reshape her very identity until she forgot who she was and could only remember who he was… after so long spent struggling with everything she had against everything she was, she hated that it felt like a relief to think about other people’s pain instead of her own.

There was nothing to do in a holding cell; Curzon had learned that all too well. Nothing to do but think and reflect, and when thinking became too much of a burden and reflecting reminded her of things she didn’t want to know, it was almost second nature to turn her face away from them both. She turned her head to the side, cheek cool against the rips at her knees, listening to the quiet hum of the force field and the whisper of the air filters, listening and staring at the wall and trying not to feel.

This time, when her eyes grew heavy and her vision started to blur, she didn’t resist. Sleep would come for her in a moment, she knew, but she was not afraid.

Whatever her dreams brought, it had to be better than this.

*

_She drank only when she was sure that she would die._

_It had taken a very long time to figure out what that meant, the difference between dying and needing, needing and wanting. Her body was cruel to her when she refused to drink, but piece by piece she learned the difference between its urges and its pleas, to indulge only the moments when it really would kill her to turn away, and to ignore all the rest. It had been an arduous and painful lesson, but she had learned it. She had learned._

_Slowly but surely, she stopped trying to ignore him, not least of all because she still needed him. No matter how desperate she got, her stomach could not tolerate the blood without him there to temper it for her, and without it she would die. She could not live without it, and that meant she could not live without him either. She needed him to hold her steady when she drank, needed him to keep her body working when it tried so hard to reject the sustenance it simultaneously craved and despised. She needed him, just as she needed the blood, and learning to accept the things she needed, even as she resisted them, was deeply exhausting._

_Her body was cruel when she ignored it, yes, but it was just as cruel when she heeded it. Most of the time, it didn’t matter which choice she made; she would still spend the next few hours staring blindly up at the sun, waiting for her limbs to stop shaking, her guts to stop clenching, her head to stop pounding. Sometimes, when she had the strength, and under his tutelage, she could use that suffering to her advantage, let it give her fresh strength when she knew she wasn’t thirsty, used it to remind her that her body didn’t need, it only wanted. It helped to know she would suffer either way, that depriving herself of what she craved wouldn’t make it any worse than giving in and granting it. The spasms would be the same either way, and that kept her from indulging them too often._

_The promises on his lips were false. She’d learned that too, and she had long since stopped believing him when he smiled that sadistic smile and told her that drinking would make her feel better. Maybe he was just trying to help, or maybe he was trying to entice her, trick her into indulging her urges more than she had to. Either way, she had learned the truth too often to believe him now: nothing in this dead place could hope to make her feel better._

_She was caught between two kinds of existence. In one corner, the corner she hid inside and clung to and wished would consume her, the sliver of self-identity that had once been a shy and squeamish young woman, the part of her that fainted at the mere sight of blood, the part of her that rejected the stuff when she tried to drink it down. In the other, whispering in a voice that sounded so much like his, the part of her that craved and hungered, the part of her that could think of nothing but blood and bones, death and decay, rage and hate and fury, the part of her that drank not because it kept her alive but because she enjoyed it. Both parts were responsible for the discomfort, the tremors and the spasms and all the suffering that laid her so low, but for entirely different reasons._

_She lay there on her back, half-dazed, hearing but not really listening as he murmured into her ear, telling her that she would feel so much better if she just let herself drink, that everything would come so much more easily if she just gave in and succumbed to the cravings as soon as they hit. She shook her head, drowning out the drone of his voice by humming fractured snatches of barely-remembered songs, Trill and human and Vulcan and Bajoran. Especially Bajoran; they sang the sweetest, saddest songs, and it resonated with the memory of something deep inside her, the place where her heart used to be before it was gone, before she let them cut it out and eat it and turn her into a shadow of someone who used to wear the name Dax._

_Bajoran songs were beautiful, she thought. So tragic and so beautiful. She closed her eyes to block out the sun, and sang._

_“Stop that. You’re butchering a perfectly good hymn.”_

_She blinked herself alert. The sun was painfully bright, dazzling her so that she couldn’t see anything at all, but of course by that point she didn’t need to; she would recognise that voice anywhere in the galaxy, anywhere in any galaxy, in any universe, anywhere at all. It was more beautiful than all the songs on Bajor, more beautiful than anything she had ever known, or ever would._

_“…Kira…”_

_“Shut up. If you can’t do justice to the music of my people, then don’t try.” A laugh, musical and melodic. “Honestly, Dax, you of all people should know better.”_

_In spite of herself, in spite of all the things she’d done, Dax found herself smiling. “Am I dreaming?” she asked hazily. “Are you a dream?”_

_Kira laughed again. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m a dream.” Dax still couldn’t see, but she felt the shift in the air as Kira shook her head, and sensed the fondness radiating out from her. “I never should have let you kill me. You get so slow and stupid when I’m not around to take care of you.”_

_“I missed you,” Dax said weakly. “I missed you so much.”_

_“Of course you did. Someone has to teach you how to tie your shoes.”_

_Dax swallowed, so desperately thirsty. “I needed you. I needed you to tell me to be brave. I needed you to tell me to be strong. I needed you to have faith in me. I needed you, Kira, so badly. But you weren’t there.”_

_“That’s because you killed me,” Kira reminded her. “You killed me, and then you ate my heart. Again and again. How do you expect me to tell you anything when I’m dead?”_

_Dax tried to sit up, but her limbs were too shaky to support her weight, so she settled for just shielding her eyes from the sunlight and squinting up into Kira’s face. She felt the sting of salt on her cheeks, and knew that she was crying. She was so dehydrated, she knew that she couldn’t afford to lose the moisture, but once the torrent of tears started, there was nothing she could do to dam it._

_“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”_

_“Are you?” Joran asked, crouching beside her. “Are you really?”_

_“Yes,” she said, clenching her teeth against the corners of her mind that still thrived in his thrall, forcing herself to look only at Kira, to see only Kira, to know only those beautiful nose ridges and the depthless Bajoran fire in her eyes. “Yes, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I killed you. I’m sorry I acted like it was honourable when it wasn’t. I’m sorry, Kira. I’m so, so sorry.”_

_“You can apologise all you want,” he said, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you’d do it again if you thought you could get away with it. You’d give anything to taste her again, wouldn’t you?” He turned to Kira, teeth bright as he smiled that ethereal smile of his, the one that was much too calm for a soul so wild and tempestuous. “Go on. Get a little closer. Lean in a little more. Mark my words, she’ll show you her teeth.”_

_“No, she won’t.” Kira did lean in a little more, delicate fingertips tracing indecipherable patterns across the skin of Dax’s cheek. Prayers or promises, she couldn’t tell. “She can’t hurt me now.”_

_Dax turned her face away. She could feel the tremors starting up again, the burning urgency, the ravenous desperation that made it so difficult for her to know whether she was really thirsty or just hungry, whether she was really dying or just half-dead. Joran was right: in that moment, she really would give anything in the world to kill Kira again, to surge up with teeth and nails and anything else she could cut with, to tear through sweet Bajoran flesh like it was made of paper, to hurt and kill and break, to tear out her heart for the hundredth time and feast on it again and again and again._

_“Kira,” she choked out, as much of a warning as she could muster. “Don’t. You know he’s right. You know I—”_

_“I know he thinks he’s right,” Kira said gently. Her fingertips were so tender, so soft; it was all Dax could do to keep from biting them off. “And I know you think he’s right.”_

_“That’s because he is.” Dax clenched her jaw, whimpered against the roiling desperation inside her chest, the cramping in her stomach and the twitching of her limbs. “He is right. I’ve been out here for so long… so many lifetimes… all I remember is what he tells me. I tried so hard, but I just have to look at you, and—”_

_“I know,” Kira said quietly. “I know what you’re feeling, Jadzia. I know what you want. I know what you think you need.” She smiled again, radiant. “But I trust you.”_

_“Why?” Dax pleaded. She felt wretched and miserable, helpless as she balled her fists and flailed blindly for purchase in the bleached-bones sand. “Why do you trust me? Every time you trust me, I hurt you. Every time you trust me, I kill you! You’re Bajoran. You should know better than anyone how dangerous trust is.”_

_“I do know that,” Kira said, still smiling. “But I also know you.”_

_Dax closed her eyes. She could hardly bear the look on Kira’s face, the eagerness and the enthusiasm, blind faith the likes of which she had only ever seen in her when she spoke about the Prophets. Dax couldn’t carry the weight of so much faith, so much trust, not when she could scarcely carry her own dark thoughts, Joran’s dark memories, the darkness of the sun burning black above them both. She couldn’t look at Kira without remembering how her good heart was, how pure and honest and breathtaking…_

_…and how delicious._

_She moaned, covering her face with hands that would not stop trembling._

_“Jadzia.” Though it was spoken like an order, there was a sweetness to the sound, like a lover’s. “Jadzia. Look at me.”_

_And so Dax did. Because she couldn’t deny Kira anything. She could fight Joran, could fight Curzon and Benjamin and all the others who haunted her and told her who and what she was, could fight all the confusion and the conflict inside of her, the good and the bad and the downright chaotic. She could fight her shattered-glass reflection, too, Jadzia and all her treachery; she could still feel the chasm in her chest, a hollow mark of everything she had learned from her. She could fight everyone and everything, and herself most of all, but she could not fight Kira. Not here, not now, not anywhere or ever. She could never fight Kira._

_“Nerys,” she said. The name felt important, like the memory of a safe place, something fundamentally different to ‘Kira’. Kira was dead, but Nerys felt like the promise of home, like breath and life and faith. So she said it again, and then again, over and over until it was all she could hear. “Nerys. Nerys. Nerys.”_

_And still, Kira smiled her smile. That smile, that beautiful Bajoran smile, the smile that burned brighter and hotter than the sun beating down from above, the smile that made Dax forget where she was and who she was and why she was, the smile that made her forget Joran, forget Curzon, forget Jadzia, forget all the things that weighed her down and turned her into this twisted broken creature with no heart and an unquenchable thirst for blood and violence and death. The smile that made worlds turn and stars implode. That smile, her smile. Nerys, just Nerys._

_“Jadzia…” she said again, in a voice as beautiful as her smile. And then, unfathomably, impossibly, “I forgive you.”_

*

It was the cold that woke her.

Sitting up groggily, she remembered the unbearable heat, the bright black sunlight beating down on her and the stark white sand burning underneath her, bones cutting into her flesh. For a few disoriented moments, it was all she could think of, all she could see and feel. She was so cold now, so disoriented and confused, for a while she couldn’t make sense of why she was remembering heat in the first place.

Her whole body was shivering, every muscle tight and aching as if in withdrawal, and it was only as she came around more fully, the stark greys of the holding cell blurring and swimming back into focus, that she was able to grasp where she was and how she’d gotten there. It was the cold gripping her limbs, the cold clenching around her belly, the cold making her shake and tremble. She wasn’t ravenous, she reminded herself over and over again; she wasn’t thirsty, wasn’t dying for the want of blood and death, and she wasn’t whispering desperate pleas to the ghost of a dead Bajoran.

She was just cold.

For the first time, it didn’t frighten her to think back on the dream, to look back and piece together the elusive details as they flickered and faded like bad holo-simulations. She remembered the heat, remembered the thirst and the blood, remembered Kira’s face, and for the first time it didn’t send her huddling in the fetal position. For the first time, it didn’t make her tongue turn thick with disgust or her limbs go heavy with dread. For the first time, it didn’t hurt, even as she remembered it all just as clearly, the thirst and the desire, the need for blood, the ache for Kira’s. She still remembered how it felt to take a life, to want to take a life, but for the first time it didn’t make her shudder or flinch. For the first time, she didn’t feel guilty or ashamed or humiliated as she thought back on all the terrible things she’d done. For the first time, all she felt was awake and alive.

_I forgive you._

She could still hear the words, Kira’s sweet voice in perfect harmony with the part of her that was reserved for only Jadzia. Kira’s voice — her Kira, her Nerys — as clear and profound as anything she’d ever known, so far distant from Intendant’s, a thousand light-years away from the cold and calculating malice that she’d become so familiar with since she’d arrived on Terok Nor. There was such a difference between them, Dax almost couldn’t understand why she hadn’t seen it before.

But then, of course, she had seen it before, hadn’t she? She had known it was there from the very beginning, and as fervently as she’d wished she could ignore it, she couldn’t, always so painfully aware that the woman who was seducing her, the woman who was taunting and abusing her, who played her like a toy and used her like a tool, was not truly Kira. She held her name, wore her face, husked in her voice, but she was no more Nerys than the unhinged fist-thinking rebel leader was Benjamin Sisko.

Of course Dax knew all of that that; the only thing they shared was their DNA, and perhaps not even all of that. (Still, the scientist in Dax couldn’t help wondering, and wishing she had the resources to take samples back for study and analysis). She knew that, and she’d always known it, so why did it feel so sudden now, so immediate and impossible, and so inexplicably sharp?

Now more than ever, she had to keep them separate, had to remember which side of the mirror she came from, which side was hers, who was who, and who she couldn’t afford to care about. It was one thing to share a bed with someone who looked like Nerys, to trade sweat and blood and sex, to be intimate without any real intimacy. It was one thing to do her job, to close her eyes and think of Jadzia as the Intendant slammed against her and into her and all over her. It was one thing to be so close but keep her distance in the places where it mattered.

But the moment the Intendant pushed her down onto her knees in front of Keiko O’Brien and tore them both apart, it became something entirely different; it became something personal, deeply and fundamentally, and though a part of her realised that everything about this place had been on the cusp of personal all along, still it struck her to the bone to realise that finally it had become that way. Finally, it had been distanced and different enough that she could not hide behind the confusion of ‘who’ and ‘what’ and ‘where’. Finally, she knew who she was, and where she was.

All of a sudden, the Intendant stopped being a mirror-universe version of the woman Dax knew and cared for. All of a sudden, she wasn’t Kira Nerys at all, not in face or name or anything else. All of a sudden, she was something fundamentally evil.

There was no trace of Kira Nerys in her now. There was nothing left in her at all. Dax remembered the edge in her voice, the steel in her eyes, the way she’d relished Dax’s suffering even more than Keiko’s, the way she had twisted every word she said and smiled as Dax had squirmed. She had taken so much pleasure in it, drawn so much glee from the thought of turning Dax into a pariah, revelled in her anguish and Keiko’s as well, in all the misery she had caused and taken such great care to distance herself from. She couldn’t risk getting her own hands dirty, after all.

Kira would never do that, Dax knew; she hated to cause pain, even to people who deserved it, even to Cardassians. It haunted her, she knew, even when it was justified. She wouldn’t do anything like this. No matter what happened to her, no matter how deeply she suffered or how much she hurt, no matter how hot the fire behind her eyes burned with the need for vengeance and justice, no matter what she felt or wanted, she would never do the things the Intendant did. Not Kira. Not Nerys. Not ever.

Dax remembered a stilted conversation they’d had once about killing. She had been in a state of turmoil, trying to decide if it was worth the stain of murder on her soul to avenge the death of Curzon’s godson, to join her old friends in battle once more and slaughter the Albino who had killed three innocent children. Unbidden, she remembered now the haunted look on Kira’s face as she tried to talk her out of it. She could see the anger in her eyes, the painful memories of her own experiences and the anguish when she thought that Dax was setting herself up to do the same.

 _This isn’t a game,_ her eyes had said, even as her mouth had tried shaped a more cohesive argument. _It’s not some silly holosuite program. You don’t get to run off and pretend to be a Klingon for a few hours and then turn it off and go back to work like nothing happened. It is real, and it will become a part of you forever._

She wasn’t erudite enough to say any of that aloud, though, and she had stumbled over the words. She had articulated it as best she could, but Dax hadn’t really understood. _“When you take someone’s life,”_ she’d said, _“you lose a part of your own as well”_ ; that was all she’d managed to get out, the closest she’d come to voicing all that truth boiling away inside her, and at the time, it had not been enough. Dax had seven lives behind her, countless more in front; surely she could afford to lose a piece of one of them, if it meant doing the right thing, if it meant seeing complete the task that felt bound to her blood. Surely it was worth the price.

It had frustrated Kira, she knew, that she failed so completely to understand what she was trying to say. She had accused her of taking it lightly, and maybe she’d been right, because when it came down to it, Dax had faltered. Time had taught her that lesson far more painfully than Kira could have at the time, and she wasn’t taking it lightly any more. Now, at last, so many months too late, she did understand. She understood how Kira felt and she understood what she meant. She understood everything, all of it, but what good would it do her now?

After Joran, every day became a struggle, a fight to keep from giving in to the part of herself that just wanted to kill, to hurt and bleed and make others suffer. Just as Curzon said in her dreams, there was no honour in what she wanted. There was no righteousness, no justice, no banner to hide behind. There was just her heart screaming for violence, her throat parched for blood, her fists clenching at her sides and her breath choking in her chest. There was just _anger_. Unharnessed, undirected, untapped. It overshadowed the sense of right, of honour, of justice, overshadowed everything she was.

Dax knew how the Intendant thought. She knew the cruelty, the heartlessness. She knew it all, because it was exactly what she’d fought so hard not to become herself. Every day was a struggle to remember who she was, to keep intact all the pieces of herself that all those months ago she had been so sure she wouldn’t miss losing if it meant doing the right thing.

The change had been so violent, so sudden and so drastic, and she had been wholly unprepared for it because it felt so different. It didn’t sing in her blood like Klingon honour, didn’t light a spark in her veins or straighten her spine to steel; she just felt twisted and broken, and it was only as she fought to keep hold of herself, to remember Dax in the flood of Joran, that she finally understood what Kira had been talking about all those months ago.

Kira could never be like the Intendant. She understood the cost of killing. The Intendant, like Joran, did not. And Dax had come so close to being just like both of them.

She held those words, Kira’s words, close to her chest now, wrapped them around her heart and used them to remind herself that it was still there, that it could still beat, that she wasn’t so far gone just yet. She let them blanket her, Kira’s words and the memory of her voice, shielding her against the cold and the solitude of the empty holding cell. They made her feel safe and grounded, comforted and as close to content as she could ever hope to be in a place as dark and dismal as this.

Part of her knew that the idea was ridiculous, that Kira was as far away as anyone could be, that she couldn’t possibly be present or aware, that she probably wasn’t even thinking of Dax at all right now… and yet still some corner of her couldn’t help feeling like she was here, the warmth of her memories radiating out to chase the chill from Dax’s bones, until she was sure she could feel her presence there, as solid and as real as anything else in this phantom universe.

She could almost believe she was there now, standing next to her just like she had in the dream, reminding Dax that she was there, that she still had faith, that she might yet forgive her. Nothing else. Not touching, not moving, barely even breathing. Just there, just reminding her that she was, that they were, that Dax was Dax and Kira was Kira and neither of them were truly evil.

It didn’t seem like much, but it was. Kira had spent all her life killing, and she understood all too well the difference between need and want, between killing by necessity and killing for pleasure. Kira knew those things, had learned them young and learned them well. For a time they had defined her, and she had tried to teach Dax, tried to help her gain some rudimentary understanding of those things she had never been forced to learn at all. But Dax wasn’t like Kira; she had never been a terrorist, and she had never lived under an occupying force. She did not know, and could not understand until it was too late.

Kira was everything Dax wished she could find the strength to be, but the Intendant was everything Joran had tried to turn her into; she thrived on violence and hate, fear and pain and torture, and she killed not because she needed to but because she wanted to. Kira, Dax knew, had only killed when it was necessary, and the memory of each kill hung around her neck like a self-strangling noose. The Intendant did not feel any of that remorse; she wielded death and pain like precision instruments, and she took great pride in using them. She was everything that Dax had struggled against, and it was only now that Dax was coming to realise she was everything Kira had struggled against as well.

Again and again, she remembered Kira’s warning. _‘When you take a life, you lose a part of your own as well’_. Again and again, it swum in her head, and Dax ached to think of the Intendant, to wonder how much of her soul was left, if any at all. Kira had fought her whole life to keep from turning into something cold and hollow every time she took a life, and she had fought to make Dax understand that she too would have to pay that price if she went after the Albino. At long last, Dax had seen what that price really looked like. She thought of the Intendant, and she saw all of Kira’s warnings made manifest.

They were the same person. At least on some level, even if it was only the genetic, they were the same person. But they were so different, so completely and fundamentally different. One, a Kira who had done terrible things all through her life because she had to, because she had no choice, because her life had taken the choice away from her. The other, a Kira who had done the same by her own volition, who had chosen the path she was on and who relished it every day, a Kira who revelled in pain and humiliation, who loved power more than anything, and her own reflection more even than that. There was a difference; even in the same acts, the same behaviours, even in the same decisions, there was a difference.

Terrible acts did not make a terrible person, Dax realised, and she clung to that as well. The Intendant was terrible not because of what she did — Kira had killed and broken people as well, hadn’t she? — but because of the perverse pleasure she got out of it. She did terrible things, and she enjoyed them. That was what made her terrible. Kira had never enjoyed what she did. Kira had never wanted any of it. Kira had killed and sullied her soul for the good of Bajor, for a righteous cause that meant more to her than her own salvation. The Intendant did it for fun. 

Dax enjoyed it too, sometimes, but she could never quite let go of the self-loathing, of Curzon’s sense of honour or Jadzia’s weak stomach. She couldn’t quite cast off Audrid’s compassion or Tobin’s nervousness; even when she let herself indulge the very worst of Joran, they were there too, guiding and grounding her. Even when she let herself enjoy it, she hated herself too; she thought of her hands around the Intendant’s throat, the scream of climax, how the pleasure had been steeped in anguish, in self-loathing, in horror at what she had become.

And maybe that should have been enough. Maybe it should be enough that she had hated herself even as she came. Maybe it should be enough that she was still capable of hating herself. But wasn’t hatred the problem in the first place?

It was enough for Kira. Kira could balm her soul with the knowledge and the certainty that she could never become the Intendant, that she could never take unconditional pleasure from terrible things, even if her sense of righteousness smiled to see a Cardassian suffer. It was enough for Kira to see the worst thing she could be and know she never would. It was enough for Kira to know the difference, to see and know and understand. It was enough for Kira. But Dax was not Kira, and it was not enough for her.

 _“I forgive you,”_ Kira had whispered in her dream.

So why couldn’t she forgive herself?


	19. Chapter 19

It was only a matter of time before the Intendant came to see her.

At first, Dax made a painstaking effort to keep track of the time. It was a convenient way of passing it, counting out the seconds as they ticked into minutes, one by one, and it was certainly a welcome distraction from internalising her issues. The simplistic repetition gave her something safe to focus on, and the mindlessness of it kept her calm when her darker thoughts pushed to the forefront. That still happened more often than she’d like, and she frequently found herself second-guessing every forward step she’d taken. She supposed it was to be expected, but it frustrated her just the same, and it was something of a comfort to have something as unimportant as timekeeping to tie herself up with.

What was the worst that could happen if she missed a second, or lost a minute, or got the hour wrong? If it was oh-seven-hundred or nineteen-thirty-nine, it didn’t really matter; either way, she was still stuck in here, and no amount of accuracy was going to change that. Keeping the time made no difference at all to her plight, and after so long weighed down by the knowledge that anything she did or said could mean someone else’s death, it was blessedly reassuring to find something to do that didn’t affect anyone at all, not even herself.

The allure of the redundancy wore off eventually, though, and after what felt like three or four lifetimes, the inevitable boredom overpowered the comfort of monotony. Slowly, Dax found herself looking for other ways to entertain herself, other nonsense thoughts to occupy her meandering mind and keep away the more serious ones. Something stupid, something pointless, something that didn’t matter and wouldn’t send anyone to an early grave. 

She had just settled on reciting all the alphabets of all the languages she knew (backwards, of course) when a familiar silhouette fell across her little corner of the cell.

“Keeping yourself busy, I see…”

Dax rolled her eyes, but didn’t bother to look up. “I was wondering if I’d ever get to see you again,” she said. It wasn’t true, of course, but she figured there was no harm in stroking the little tyrant’s ego a bit.

“I’m sure you were,” the Intendant deadpanned smugly. “Sitting here all alone with nothing to keep you occupied, pining away for me, wishing you could have just been a little more reasonable. What a sad and sorry creature you’ve become, my dear. Your counterpart would be so disappointed if she could see you now.”

That struck a nerve, and Dax instantly dropped the facade of civility. “Did you want something?” she demanded. “Or is it just a slow day in Brutality Central? Ran out of Terrans to torture, and decided to move on to Trills? Hate to disappoint you, but our blood’s the same colour.”

The Intendant’s eyes narrowed. “I know exactly what colour your blood is,” she said coolly. “You’re still soaked in it.”

That was true, Dax realised, and grimaced. She’d forgotten the pain of her beating for a while, locked up with nobody to talk to, and she’d spent so much time sitting still that the only real discomfort came from stiffness or a limb falling asleep. Still, she couldn’t let the Intendant get the last word, and she certainly wasn’t about to let her drag any more pain out of her, so she shrugged and mustered a lazy smile.

“So what then?” she demanded. “Don’t tell me you missed me…”

On another day, she might have drawn it out even more, let herself play into the Intendant’s hand like she had so many times before, but right now she was in in no mood to pretend at power struggles when there was no doubt in either of their minds who had the stuff and who didn’t. Dax was a prisoner and the Intendant was her captor; there was no point in pretending anything else was the case.

Amused by the question, the Intendant laughed that crazed laugh of hers. “It’s heartening to see that a day in a holding cell isn’t enough to temper your delightful sense of humour,” she said. “Of course I missed you, darling. Good help is so hard to find these days, you know… and to be blunt, without your particular breed of help, things really have become quite unbearable.”

Dax chuckled in spite of herself. “I’m sure you can take care of yourself well enough without me.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, my sweet. I’m positively useless with my hands, you know.” That wasn’t true, by any definition, but Dax refused to give her the satisfaction of hearing it said out loud. “Besides, you’re so good at getting things just right…”

Dax had heard enough double-edged innuendoes to last a lifetime, or seven. “You’re breaking my heart,” she said.

“Oh, no. I’m afraid you broke mine.” Her expression turned sharp, sudden and unsettling, and Dax scrambled up to her feet, feeling very exposed. “I was perfectly sincere, you know, when I suggested that you stay here and take a place at my side. And I meant what I said to that snivelling Terran as well: I really would have given you anything you wanted if you’d just had the strength of character to ask for it.” She sighed, too heavy and too loud to be really convincing, and Dax bit down on her tongue to keep from grating out a vicious retort. “I really was thoroughly taken with you.”

“You’ll forgive me for not taking that as much of a compliment,” Dax muttered coldly. “You’re ‘thoroughly taken’ with everyone.” She let her lips pull back into a sneer, the closest thing she could muster to a real challenge. “Especially yourself. I’d wager you’re just disappointed that you got me this time, instead of another visit from my Nerys.”

The Intendant burst out laughing. It was a calculated laugh, this time, the laugh of someone who had heard something unexpectedly wonderful, and was already planning out all the best ways to use it. “ _Your_ Nerys?” 

“My…” Dax recoiled, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “…shut up.”

The Intendant shook her head, clearly delighted. “ _Your_ Nerys,” she said again, enunciating each syllable with great relish, twisting the verbal knife just as ruthlessly as she would have twisted a real one. “My, my, my… things really are different on that side, aren’t they? Have you claimed her yet, I wonder?” Dax opened her mouth to tell her to shut up again, but the Intendant refused to give her the chance. “No, of course you haven’t. If you had, you would never have let me take you. Well, not without a fight, anyway.” She shrugged, as though that made no difference to her, then chuckled, throaty and highly suggestive. “If you were getting what you wanted from _your_ Nerys…”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dax hissed, shivering; even as she said it, she knew that she was playing into the Intendant’s hands, that she had all but confessed the truth, but she couldn’t keep from rising to the bait. “You don’t know the first thing about it. So why don’t you just—”

“Let me guess…” the Intendant went on with a lascivious smirk, ignoring her completely. “You want her, but you can’t have her. You’d give anything for her to be the one doing all those filthy things I do to you, but she’s just not interested.” She shook her head, as though disappointed, though the smile never left her lips. “Well, it’s her loss, my dear. You really are quite a catch. If you ask me—”

“I didn’t ask you,” Dax snapped. “Nobody did.”

“No,” the Intendant agreed with a careless little half-shrug. “But I did ask you, didn’t I? And I still haven’t heard so much as a squeak of denial. In fact, I don’t hear anything at all. Did I hit a little too close to home, my poor lovesick Trill?”

“No,” Dax ground out through clenched teeth.

“Oh, I _did_!” the Intendant cried, in raptures. “You poor deluded little thing! You _do_ want her!”

“Even if I did,” Dax huffed, still not bothering to deny it, “it would just make two of us.”

Naturally, the Intendant was not the least bit thrown by the slight; in fact, it only seemed to make her even more gleeful than she already was. She beamed, running a lazy hand through her hair and gracing Dax with the most sultry, seductive look she was capable of. Which, given some of the other looks Dax had seen on that face during her stay here, was really saying something.

“It would, wouldn’t it?” she smiled. “Two of us pining away for her… oh, just think of it…” She shivered, and Dax couldn’t help but shiver too. “But then…” the Intendant went on, running her hands over her own curves, “…at least I get to enjoy her body whenever I like, while you languish away with just an empty bed and your own sorry hand to bring you comfort.”

“You didn’t think it was very sorry when it was servicing you,” Dax shot back quickly, though the words sounded empty even to her own ears, the wounded death cry of an animal that knew its end was nigh. “So what does that make you?”

“Why, easy, of course,” the Intendant replied with a wry, self-deprecating laugh. “Did I ever give you any illusions to the contrary?”

Dax couldn’t really argue with that, but she’d had more than had enough of the whole discussion. It made her heart ache to think about Kira, and it hurt in some place even deeper than that to think about the Intendant wanting her as well; though she’d gathered as much from Kira’s reports, it was another thing entirely to actually face it like this, and she shifted uncomfortably on her feet. It was bad enough that this twisted tyrant had tainted Dax, that she had taken her and Jadzia both, that she had branded them and bled them and made them hers. It was bad enough that Dax herself had fallen prey to her sordid desires, let herself be seduced and tried to convince herself it was for the mission. All of that was bad enough, but she couldn’t endure the idea of her wanting to do the same to Kira as well.

Not Nerys. Nerys was better than this. Nerys was special, and she would not be tainted by the likes of the Intendant. Not while Dax was still breathing.

“Enough,” she said as the anger rose anew. “You didn’t come here to humiliate me, so why don’t you just get on with—”

“Now, why would you assume that?” the Intendant countered coolly, cutting her off. “Like you said, maybe it’s just been a slow day. Maybe I really did just come down here to toy with you a little. Who are you to say I didn’t? And more importantly…” She bared her teeth, sharp and threatening. “…who are you to stop me if I did?”

Just like that, Dax felt the fight go out of her. She flinched, defeated, and looked back to the floor where she had been sitting a moment ago. “Nobody,” she sighed. “I’m nobody.”

“Correct!” She turned away, fingers playing over the wall panel, and Dax glanced up as the force field flickered and dissolved in front of her. “You _are_ nobody. In fact, you’re nothing.”

She took a slow, lazy step forwards. Instinctively, Dax reached for the knife sheathed at her hip, suddenly aching for the kiss of steel on skin, the bracing bite of pain to keep safe and under control. The Intendant moved too quickly, though, stepping into the cell completely with one more long stride and wrenching the weapon out of her hand. Dax watched raptly as she threaded the blade between her fingers in her usual way, so taken by the play of light as it bounced off the flawless surface that she forgot to be affronted.

“Now, now,” the Intendant chided, like she was talking to a disobedient child. “Let’s not get over-excited. I understand why you would, of course — the very idea of two of me would be enough to excite anyone — but there’s no need for sadism…” She smiled slyly, leaving no doubt that she knew Dax’s true intention for the knife. “…or masochism, if that’s still your flavour.”

Dax clenched her jaw, swallowed the urge to bite down on her lip. She didn’t need blood or pain or violence, she reminded herself; she could control herself perfectly well without any of them. She wasn’t dying, she was just thirsty, and she could stave that off all on her own. Again and again she wrapped the thought around herself, again and again, until she found the strength to look away as the Intendant continued to toy so carelessly with the knife.

It took every ounce of self-control she had to keep breathing, to make even the slightest movement without lunging at her, diving on her like a wild animal in a bid to reclaim the weapon, or else to throw the Intendant far enough off-balance that she would lose her grip and let the edge slip against the exposed, enticing skin between her fingers. Either would be so easy, and both were so tempting, but she didn’t indulge them. She didn’t need to. _She did not need to_.

“Are you done?” she asked instead, praying for her voice to stay as steady as her will, for her eyes to stay clear, her limbs straight, her entire self alert and sober.

“Actually, no.”

The Intendant tossed the knife from one hand to the other, light arcing off the blade; no doubt she was trying to goad Dax into making a grab for it, into lurching forwards and giving her an excuse to strike her. But the effort was in vain; Dax ignored the bait, keeping her eyes locked on her face instead, the only part of her that mattered, glowing eyes and the sinister smile that reminded her once again that she was not Kira.

“What then?” she asked.

“If you must know,” the Intendant huffed with a shrug, “I came down here to tell you that your precious drug has arrived. I thought it might bring some light to this gloomy cell. But if you’re not interested…”

She didn’t finish, clearly aware that she didn’t have to, simply quirked a brow and let Dax rise on her own. Which, of course, she did; before she even realised she was responding at all, she had already stood up a little straighter, already bracing herself for the war of wills she was sure they were about to begin. She could see the unrepentant joy shining from the Intendant’s eyes, the anticipation of another excuse to torture someone simply for having the audacity not to lick her boots.

Well, Dax thought, feeling the stubbornness take hold of her, if the Intendant expected her to bow down and beg for mercy now, just because she had something new to dangle in front of her, she was going to be sorely disappointed. Dax had had enough of her, enough of Terok Nor, enough of this universe. She’d had enough of everything, and she was through playing games; if the Intendant wanted to rake her over the coals in payment for saving Jadzia’s life, then so be it. If she wanted to to tear every dark thought of her mind, every illicit feeling and sordid fantasy, then let her. She could have them all; no doubt they would do her far more good than they’d ever done Dax.

“You know I’m interested,” she said, flatly, refusing to drop to her knees and beg. “You know everything.”

The Intendant chuckled. “Not quite everything, my dear… but more than enough, I can assure you. I’m sure you’ll have learned by now not to underestimate me, so don’t insult my intelligence by pretending you’ve forgotten how many times I’ve outsmarted you since you got here.” Dax scowled and shrugged off the point, refusing to break eye-contact, and the Intendant graced her with a benevolent smile. “Now, I’ve already arranged for your cargo to be delivered directly to your ship. No extra charge to you, of course. I’m generous like that.”

Dax rolled her eyes, and pointedly refused to thank her. “Well, you’re certainly not generous in other departments.”

“Your counterpart would beg to differ,” the Intendant shot back coolly. “You will be sure to send her my warmest regards when you see her, won’t you?” Dax grunted, and the Intendant sobered, returning to the task at hand. “But first, of course, there’s the small matter of my payment. As delightful as you’ve been, my sweet, I simply couldn’t dream of letting you go without settling your debts. After all, I may never have the pleasure of your acquaintance again, and my bed will be so cold without all of your delectable perversions to keep it warm. So I’m afraid I must be a frightful bore and insist.”

Dax swallowed, tasting the bitter memory of bile and blood, but forced herself to stay strong and steady. “You want so badly to make this difficult for me, don’t you?” she demanded, letting just the faintest hint of acid creep into her voice, and a shadow of hate. “You can’t bear the thought that it might not bother me any more. You can’t accept that maybe I’ve made peace with who I am and what I feel.”

She spread her arms, exposing herself completely, and the Klingon in her balked at baring her midsection so readily to the flash of the knife. The Intendant’s lips twitched, clearly tempted, but she didn’t move forward. “And it seems that you can’t accept that maybe you haven’t,” she said softly.

“Tell yourself that, if it’ll take the sting out,” Dax said with a shrug. “But you know what? I’m done here. I’m done with you, I’m done with this station, and I am done with feeling ashamed. You want full access to my perversions, Intendant? Well, you’re welcome to them. You’re welcome to my sordid desires, you’re welcome to my dark dreams, you’re welcome to whatever the hell you want. You’re welcome to all of it. I don’t care any more.”

The Intendant watched her curiously for a long moment, not speaking, simply studying her. Dax held her gaze, though she couldn’t help noting that it was getting more and more difficult. She believed in what she was saying; she really and truly did believe it… so why were her hands still trembling when she reached behind her to brace against the wall? And why, in the moment that the Intendant’s features relaxed into one of her sinister smirks, did she suddenly find it impossible to keep from looking away?

“Oh, you deluded Trill…” the Intendant purred, speaking almost to herself. “You can tell yourself you don’t care all you like, but it won’t make it true. You care a great deal. I think—”

“You think a lot of things that aren’t true,” Dax interrupted with blood-tasting bitterness. “That’s the down-side of thinking with your ego instead of your brain.” The Intendant sucked in a breath at that, and the knife twitched in her hand, clearly tempted to lash out and mark Dax even more thoroughly than she already had. Still, though, she restrained herself, even as Dax pressed on, voice lowering until it was scarcely above a murmur. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but it’s true. I don’t care. You want your precious payment? It’s all yours. So long as I get my benzocyatizine and get the hell out of this place, you can take anything you want from me. I’m through trying to fight you, and I’m sure as hell through trying to fight me.”

“Well, now…” The Intendant heaved another dramatic sigh, sounding thoroughly disappointed. “You’re no fun at all, are you? Whatever happened to the feisty little thing with the temper?”

“A few hours in solitary confinement does wonders for the temperament,” Dax replied humourlessly, and let her head drop back back to rest against the wall along with the rest of her. She forced her features to harden, her eyes to turn cold and steely, willing the Intendant to see just how true her words were, then forced them both back on-topic. “I don’t see why you want them, and I don’t care, but you’re welcome to all of my dirty little secrets. But you ought to know, they’re not worth a damn thing…”

“They are to me,” the Intendant replied, entirely too quickly. “Maybe I just want to commit them all to memory and command my slaves to whisper them to me between the sheets. Did you ever think of that?”

She leaned in, breathy with real intimacy, and caressed the side of Dax’s face with the backs of her fingers; Dax kept her eyes on her other hand, the one with the knife, and tried not to tremble. “If that’s what you want,” she said, willing her voice to stay steady. “If you want to get off on thinking about all the terrible things I might have done to you, that’s none of my business.”

“Are you sure about that?” the Intendant asked in a sultry whisper. “Doesn’t it entice you to think of it? To know that, even when you’re a whole universe away, I can still use you to bring me pleasure? Doesn’t it bring you some pleasure to know that when you’re in your cold lonely bed wishing that _your_ Nerys would join you, somewhere out there _a_ Nerys is thinking of you as she comes?”

“You’re not Nerys,” Dax insisted quietly. “You might have her face. You might wear her body. You might talk in her voice. You might even smile like her, sometimes. But you’re not Nerys, and you never will be.”

“There’s that Trill stubbornness again,” the Intendant sighed. “I’m afraid it’s always been the downfall of your people. You’re all so intent on denying anything that doesn’t please you, you never bother trying to improve. You never learn. You just sweep everything you don’t like under the carpet, and let some lesser species deal with it later.” She shook her head. “You should talk to _my_ Jadzia about that.” There was a deliberateness in that, the way her eyes hardened on ‘my’, and Dax felt a chill shudder up her spine. “She knows all about it, I’m sure. Such a tragic shame.”

Dax sucked in her breath but refused to be baited. “I’m sure she does,” she replied, tearing her gaze away from the knife and turning her head to glare at the wall instead. “But I didn’t cross universes just to get a lesson on social politics. Do you want your stupid payment or not?”

“Oh, very much,” the Intendant purred. “But perhaps we should take this conversation somewhere a little more comfortable…”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she meant by that, but Dax was frankly so sick and tired of staring at blank walls and flickering force fields that she almost welcomed the invitation. That the Intendant was trying to trap her was not even a question, of course, but Dax wasn’t the least bit concerned about that. If she expected to trigger a wave of nightmare memories by taking her back to her quarters, she would be very disappointed; Dax was past the point of cringing and cowering, trembling at the thought of her temper, of Joran, of pleasure in pain or any of the rest of it. She was beyond caring about any of this, at least so far as the Intendant herself was concerned, and there was not a damned thing that tyrant could do to change that.

Besides, it was more effort than it was worth to try and resist. So, instead, she just closed her eyes, letting herself go limp and compliant as the Intendant led her through the station; she didn’t want to remember the lightless corridors of this place, the aura of hopelessness that went hand-in-hand the name ‘Terok Nor’, the desolation and the stain of lives lost painting the dark metallic bulkheads. She wondered, briefly, if Deep Space Nine had looked so melancholy back in the days of the Cardassian occupation, and whether her Kira Nerys still wandered its corridors and thought back to a place that looked like this.

There was a small part of her, carefully locked away, that knew perfectly well what she was agreeing to, that there was nothing coincidental at all in the Intendant’s choice of relocation, and that by not resisting Dax was making herself compliant. The Intendant wasn’t the sort of person who asked for permission before taking something, or even someone; it was impressive enough that she had even given Dax an opportunity to refuse at all, however token that refusal would be. It was just a small part, though, the part that still secretly longed to believe the Intendant was showing her some respect, not simply trying to get a rise. The rest of her, however, the rational part, just wanted to ignore the whole thing, to feign ignorance, to pretend that it was a surprise when they reached the familiar lush quarters, and pretend that it was unexpected when she was led for what felt like the hundredth time to the well-used bedroom.

Dax stared at the floor as the Intendant discarded her clothes, placing the knife with uncharacteristic tenderness on a nearby table and settling herself on the oversized bed. She didn’t order Dax to do the same, and she didn’t ask her either; she simply lounged back against the pillows when she was done, watching to see whether Dax would disrobe on her own, or if she would be stubborn to the end.

Dax, no doubt unsurprisingly, opted for the latter. She refused to play into the Intendant’s hands, refused to take so much as a step without being explicitly instructed to do so. Instead, she turned inwards, keeping her mind on other things. The slow ticking of time, imagining the look on Jadzia’s face when she returned at last, imagining the look on Kira’s face when she finally got out of this hellish universe and caught up with her on Bajor. A thousand little things, needless and pointless, little pinpricks of thought that kept her from thinking of the Intendant at all. Whatever unspeakable things she planned to do, it just was business, nothing more, and Dax would not let herself forget that.

“Don’t look so serious, my dear,” the Intendant husked, sprawling lazily on her back amid the fresh clean sheets. “This isn’t an interrogation. Relax.”

In a gesture of defiance, Dax cracked her knuckles. They were sore, yes, but not screaming, bruised this time not by stone but by the imprint of the Intendant’s face, her jaw and her bone. Of course, the tyrant herself was completely healed now, lounging on the bed with all the carelessness of someone who had never taken a blow in her life, as perfect and flawless as she’d ever been. Dax was not so lucky; her knuckles bore the mark of her assault against the Intendant, and the rest of her body still bore the beating she’d received in return. Just as she always did, at least since Joran, she relished the pain, but she relished the contrast far more, the differences between them.

The Intendant had washed herself clean of her ill deeds, the mark of rebellion long since repaired. She had stripped it all away, and the evidence along with it, so she could stand up in front of her slaves again and again and still look like the perfect leader. But Dax wasn’t so shallow, and she wore her bruises with pride, the ones she’d earned herself and the ones she’d been given by the Intendant. She wore them all over her body, not the thin rivers of desperation that Jadzia’s knife had carved through her palm but the bone-deep brand of what had been done here, of righteousness and punishment. They were a lesson, a reminder of why it was all right to be violent sometimes, and Dax did not want them washed clean.

“I am relaxed.” she said stubbornly, meeting the Intendant’s eye. “Can we get on with this? I have cargo to deliver, as you well know, and I don’t want to—”

“Jadzia.”

The name was a command, clipped and authoritative. Dax recoiled, struck once again by just how much she hated the sound of it. Her relationship with her name was hardly simple, even at the best of times, and she’d lost count of the number of times she’d forgotten that she couldn’t answer to ‘Curzon’ or ‘Emony’ since she absorbed their memories with the symbiont. Still, until very recently, she had always drawn a kind of quiet solace in reminding herself that, no, she was still Jadzia.

She was Dax, of course, and sometimes it was entirely too easy to be taken in by Curzon’s adventures and Emony’s achievements and all the rest of it, but at the heart and soul of herself, she tried her hardest to identify as Jadzia. Painful as it was to give the symbiont’s centuries of wisdom over to a shy little girl, it felt right. It felt honest. That shy little girl had worked herself sick to get where she was; she had been washed out of the initiate program and reapplied, the first Trill in history to do so successfully, and the Dax symbiont was where it was now because of her. Dax hadn’t achieved any of that; Jadzia had done it all on her own, with her own strength and intellect, and she would not allow herself to forget that.

Still, though, it had taken on a bitter edge since she’d arrived in this universe, since she’d started applying it to the Jadzia Dax who belonged here, and certainly since she’d started hearing it so often on the Intendant’s lips, whispered and shouted and murmured in a hundred different ways. It had started to sound unpleasant, shameful, the sound of ‘Jadzia’ almost more sickening than the sound of ‘Joran’.

She felt humiliated when she heard that name now, like Jadzia had become something unclean, not just the name but the person behind it, like everything she was had been made dirty by this place, by the Intendant, by all the things she’d done and thought and felt since she had arrived here. It wasn’t like the guilt she felt when she thought of Joran, when she felt his presence inside her, pushing her to do and think and feel, pushing her to become so many things that she didn’t want to be. Joran’s twisted psyche belonged to Dax, but Jadzia’s name was hers and hers alone, and there was nobody but her to blame for the horrible things she felt when she heard it spoken.

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, and knew that it was a mistake almost before the words were out of her mouth.

“Why not?” the Intendant demanded, latching on to her discomfort like a shark smelling blood, sensing an opening to torment her even if she couldn’t possibly know why.

Dax forced herself to shrug, stiff shoulders aching, fought to play it down. “You won’t let me call you by your name,” she pointed out, and hated the quiver in her voice, the tremors that she knew would give her away, the obviousness of the lie. “So why should I let you call me by mine?”

“Because, as you said yourself, you have no authority here,” the Intendant said. “And I have more than enough authority to do whatever I want.” She smiled, serpentine. “But I suppose you have a point. It is only fair, after all. If I am going to call you ‘Jadzia’ — and make no mistake, my dear, I am — maybe I should let you call me ‘Nerys’.” Dax flinched, too violently to even try to conceal. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Being able to call my name… _her_ name… as you—”

“Shut up!” Dax shouted, hating herself.

The Intendant laughed. “There’s that beautiful temper,” she cooed, seeming genuinely enthralled. “My sweet, angry Jadzia…”

“Stop it.” Dax clenched her jaw hard enough to hurt, hating that she was letting this affect her, hating that it still could even after all the ways she’d convinced herself she didn’t care.

Watching her with obvious rapture, the Intendant idly plucked up the knife from where she’d laid it down and tossed it at her. Dax caught it effortlessly, then groaned, inexplicably overcome by the urgent need to use it.

“Please,” the Intendant offered, noting the strain on her face, the way her eyes glazed over as she looked at the knife, and gesturing for her to go ahead. “There’s no need for modesty here, my dear, and you certainly shouldn’t feel shy on my account. Do whatever you need to make yourself more… comfortable.”

Dax chewed the inside of her cheek, swallowing down a series of Klingon curses. She was angry again; it wasn’t righteous, but it didn’t feel frightening either. Truthfully, she was starting to wonder if she would ever feel guilty for indulging her anger as long as she was in this place. It came so naturally, and with so many reasons; even if she had wanted to stem the tide of it, she wasn’t entirely sure it would be a particularly smart move at this point. Better to be blinded by rage than turned numb by trying not to feel anything at all.

Still, that flicker of self-awareness wasn’t enough to keep her from sliding the familiar edge of the knife across the backs of her knuckles, just under the cracked bruises, hoping that the line of blood and the sting of pain where she balled her fist would be enough to keep her from punching the bulkhead when the Intendant’s wheedling inevitably drove her to despair. It wasn’t even close to what she wanted; the blood was too thin and the pain wasn’t sharp enough, but it was enough to keep her from doing any real damage to either of them, at least for the time being, and it was enough to turn her nerves to steel, to straighten her spine once more and ready her for what was to come.

The Intendant, of course, refused to take her eyes off her. Dax felt like she was on display; even though she was still fully clothed, and intended to stay that way if she had any say in the matter, she felt almost like she was more naked than the Intendant, who wasn’t wearing anything at all. Those firestorm eyes didn’t miss anything, and they were locked now on the trickle of blood from Dax’s fist as it dripped in tiny beads to the lush carpet. Soft, rhythmic droplets, dark and dangerous, and the Intendant seemed not quite able to decide whether she was disgusted or aroused by the sight, angry about the stain on her carpet but turned on at the same time by the hitch in Dax’s breathing.

In truth, Dax had to admit that she felt rather the same way. As thoroughly as the Intendant sickened her, it was still the shape of Kira Nerys lying naked and open in front of her, and her traitorous body would not let her forget it. She tried to swallow it down, the unwanted desire and the illicit thoughts that went with it, thoughts that hadn’t shamed her for more than a year, thoughts that suddenly shamed her now more than they ever had before. It rose in a flush across her face, the heat and the embarrassment in equal measure, and she struggled to force it back, to focus just as the Intendant did on the blood slicking the back of her hand, the stains on the carpet, soon to be the only thing to prove that she had ever been here at all, and the knife that was wringing it out of her, the handle heavy and balanced in her hand, the blade curved against her knuckles, a permanent reminder of why she was here in the first place.

 _Jadzia,_ she thought, and closed her eyes.

“Whenever you’re ready,” the Intendant encouraged after a long weighted silence. “Tell me everything.”

So Dax told her. She told her about the countless hours she’d spent in the holosuites back on Deep Space Nine, how she would lock herself away for hours on end, fighting endless armies of imaginary enemies because it had felt safer than keeping company with real people. She told her about the violence, how she’d felt like it was eating her alive, the endless struggle to keep herself under control, to keep from tearing the head off anyone who dared to speak to her. She told her how frightened she had been, how every moment she lost focus was a moment she might hurt someone, and how the part of her that was Joran couldn’t wait for that to happen. She told her how she’d felt like a time-bomb, terrified but exhilarated, in a constant state of anticipation and hastily-suppressed excitement drowned in fear.

Against her better judgement, she told her about Kira. Her Kira. She told the Intendant how completely Nerys understood what it felt like, how fully she knew what it was to really and truly _hate_ , how it felt to drown in violent thoughts, and how she trusted Dax not to lose herself in her own. She told her about Kira’s past, how troubled and tragic it was, how many years she’d lost to hating the Cardassians and how she was only now learning not to feel that way. She told her everything about her Nerys, how strong and how beautiful she was and how she had made Dax feel strong and beautiful too, if only for a moment. She told her all of that, hoping in spite of herself that the Intendant might allow a flicker of recognition, but her expression didn’t change at all.

And so, moving on, she told her about the dreams. She told her how she had taken Kira and then killed her, how she’d torn out her heart and eaten it right there in front of her corpse, both of their bodies still slick with release. She told her how her heart had tasted, how it had left her sickened and sated at the same time. It should not have surprised her as much as it did that the Intendant enjoyed that part immensely.

She told her about Curzon, too, about how hard he’d tried to save her from her self-destruction, how he’d tried to tell her what was honourable and what was not, how he’d done everything he could to guide Jadzia through her dreams just as he guided Dax through the symbiont’s memories. She told her, too, how she’d laughed in his face, teeth turned red with blood as she grinned and shook her head. The Intendant laughed too, and said that she would have done the same.

Dax ignored her, of course. She moved on, telling her about all the times she’d woken drenched in sweat, thrilled and terrified, not sure who she was or how to trust herself, trembling with horror at the visceral imagery still branded on her mind’s eye, and at the same time, inexplicably aroused. She felt that way now, too; the horror had been tempered by acceptance, at least in part, but the same couldn’t be said for the arousal that kicked once more in her veins, memory touched by want.

The Intendant was aroused too, it seemed, lazily touching herself as she listened. Dax tried not to watch, tried to look away, but even when she did it was still inescapable. Even when she stared at the floor, she was all too aware of the flurry of motion, the slick slide of skin on skin, the soft and sensuous sighs. The sound and the sensation went right through her, powerful as a phaser blast, igniting the want that had already begun to simmer.

 _I don’t care,_ she told herself again, and willed her body to listen. _I don’t care about this. I’ve made my peace with it._

It didn’t help. It was one thing to make peace with the anger, the perversion and the hatred, but another thing entirely to stop being affected by it. She wasn’t afraid and she wasn’t ashamed, but she was still affected, her body still responding in all the ways it usually did, and while she was sure she would be able to stave it off if she was alone, she wasn’t alone now, and the Intendant was very efficient in setting fire to whatever restraint Dax might once have been able to summon.

She forced herself to breathe deep, slow and steady, to close her mind against the flood of sensation. The Intendant was playing her, she reminded herself, just like she always did. She’d spotted a weakness in her, maybe in the hitching of her breath or the tremor in her hands, and she was doing everything she could to exploit it. She wanted to make Dax breathless, wanted her to have no choice but admitting that she really was turned on by all of this. Even now, she would have her victory.

“You see,” she murmured from the bed, voice low and husky. “For all of that sickening morality, you’re thrilled by it. Your dreams, your temper, that inner violence of yours… you’re thrilled by it all. You’re intoxicated, invigorated… _aroused_. Aren’t you?”

Dax swallowed. There was no point in denying it; the evidence spoke for itself. “So what?” she demanded. “So are you.”

“Well, of course I am.” The intendant shrugged. “But I never denied it, did I? You’re the one standing up there on your little pedestal pretending to be better than the rest of us. But you’re not, are you? You’re enjoying this just as much as I am.”

“Is there a point to this?” Dax demanded, annoyed.

“It excites you, doesn’t it?” Her eyes were sparkling. “Night after night, indulging all those sinful urges, letting yourself do all those things you were too ashamed to do in the real world, knowing you can get away with it in there, knowing that no-one can touch you, knowing that you’ll never be punished… knowing that _she’ll_ never find out what you want to do to her…”

Dax rolled her eyes. “Stop it.”

“…or maybe that’s the problem,” the Intendant went on, ignoring her. “Maybe it’s not shame you’re feeling at all. Maybe it’s frustration. Did you ever think of that? Maybe you’re disappointed that _your_ Nerys never walked in and heard you moaning her name. Maybe you’re disappointed that she never asked you to tell her about it…”

“Like you did, you mean?”

“Yes, exactly.” She hummed thoughtfully, and Dax tried not to watch as she slid her fingers a little lower, a little deeper, a little— _no, please, not now_. “Is that what you’re thinking about now, I wonder? Are you letting yourself imagine that I’m her?” 

“No,” Dax said, willing herself to believe it.

The Intendant laughed. “You’re perfectly welcome to, you know. I promise I won’t be offended. After all, she is such an attractive young woman.” She sat up a little, shifting her hips and letting out a low luxurious moan that struck Dax right between the legs. “You can even call me ‘Major’ if you want.”

In spite of herself, Dax whimpered. “Don’t.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. It’s _‘Nerys’_ , isn’t it?”

“Are we done?” Dax snapped.

The Intendant just laughed. “Is that why it’s suddenly coming so easily to you?” she asked. “Is that why you’re suddenly finding it so easy to tell me all of this? Because you’re letting yourself pretend I’m your Nerys?”

“No,” Dax said again, feeling light-headed and faintly nauseous. “It’s easy because I don’t care. I told you that. I’ve put this behind me. I don’t need to… I don’t need to think of anyone else, and you flatter yourself that you’re worth thinking about at all. I know who I am, and that’s all that matters.”

“So you keep insisting,” the Intendant retorted with a chuckle. “But I’m afraid your face gives you away, my sweet. You can hardly contain yourself. Now, perhaps it’s the thought of all that delicious violence that’s colouring your cheeks so radiantly… but if not, then I’m afraid it must be me.” She smiled, clasping her free hand to her bosom, even as the other redoubled its labours. “Either way, it means that you’re not the frigid flower you pretend to be. You want her. You want her like you had her in your dreams. You want her like you’ve had _me_ , and it’s arousing you more than you can stand even just to talk about it.” She sighed, satisfaction touched by boredom. “One day, sweet Jadzia, all of those sordid urges are going to rise up and claim you. Wouldn’t it be better if it happened here, with me?”

Dax took a deep breath. “No,” she repeated, and hoped that her voice sounded steadier than she felt. “Not you. Not again. Not ever.” Her jaw ached; she tried to relax, but her teeth started chattering instead. “Do you understand me?”

“Of course I understand you,” the Intendant said, perfectly calm. “But do _you_ understand? I know what you’re feeling, my dear. I know violence and I know perversion… and I know what those things can do to a soul. Especially one as pure and innocent as yours.” She paused for a moment, and Dax stared up at the ceiling to keep from watching the rhythm of her fingers. “Well, I suppose ‘innocent’ is a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? Let’s say ‘corruptible’ instead, shall we?” She let that sink in for a few seconds, then smiled. “My point, dearest, is that I know all too well what violence can do. Can your Nerys claim the same?”

Dax flinched. She turned her face away again, not out of modesty this time but shame. The weight of that question was almost more than she could bear, and the answer that came with it was even worse. It made her feel ill just thinking about it, the look on Kira’s face as she tried so hard to articulate how it felt to kill, what it meant to take a life. She could definitely claim the same, Dax knew, and with far greater certainty than the Intendant, for all her cockiness and confidence. She certainly knew what violence could do; that was a lesson she had learned again and again and again.

Who was the Intendant to take that away from her?, Dax thought angrily. She wanted to say it, too, to stand up and sing Kira’s praises to this world that could benefit so much from her. She wanted to make the Intendant see exactly how much better her counterpart was, until even the great narcissist was jealous, until she had no choice but to cast away her erotic self-indulgence and seethe with bitterness at how inferior she was. She wanted to say it all, to yell it until it could not be ignored, but the words would not come.

“That’s what I thought,” the Intendant said, as though Dax’s silence was an answer in itself, as though she had confessed simply by saying nothing. “She betrayed me too, you know. Your beloved Nerys. Everyone from your side betrays me.”

“I didn’t betray you,” Dax said hotly, though she didn’t dare to speak for Kira. “I didn’t do anything to you. All I did was refuse to play your stupid games.” She trailed off for a moment, faltering painfully as she thought again of Keiko and the other Terrans. “What you do to those people…”

“Ah, yes. Your friends, the Terrans.”

“They’re not my friends,” Dax argued, but the words came too quickly and too reflexively.

“That one was,” the Intendant argued, eyes narrowing. “You called her by name. I should’ve had you executed on the spot for that.”

Dax tried to block out the memory of Keiko O’Brien’s dirt-streaked face, the lines of fatigue and fear, desperation overshadowed only by the instinct to stay alive. “Maybe it would do you some good to know their names,” she said acidly. “Maybe then you wouldn’t treat them like animals to be slaughtered.”

The Intendant sat up a little, though not enough to dislodge her hand, fixing Dax with a furious glare. “You’re hardly one to lecture me on how to treat people,” she remarked coldly. “I treated you with nothing but kindness and respect, lest you forget. I welcomed you onto my station, into my quarters and into my bed, and you repaid my hospitality with lies and deception, by openly defying me in front of my workers, and by assaulting me in my own quarters. Perhaps you should take a good look in the mirror before you strut around accusing me of treating people unfairly.”

“You’re a tyrant,” Dax reminded her. “You’re a tyrant, and a sadist. Those people are innocents. That woman—”

She cut herself off before she had a chance to talk about Keiko, but the Intendant’s attention had been piqued just the same. “That woman is a worthless Terran,” she said flatly. “And you should both consider yourselves lucky that I let either one of you live to see out the day.”

Dax swallowed. It took everything she had not to leap to Keiko’s defence, demand that the Intendant stay away from her. Anything she said now would do her more harm than good, and they both knew it; if she told the Intendant to leave Keiko alone, she would make damn sure to kill her slowly and painfully the next time she took even the tiniest step out of line. And that would be on Dax’s head.

No. Better to cast this whole conversation aside before the Intendant saw how much it meant to her and did something terrible just to spite her. “Are we done?” she demanded again.

“I suppose.” The Intendant sighed again, softer, sounding almost sincerely sorrowful. “I really will miss you, you know. For all of your cruelty and treason, you were thoroughly entertaining. My bed will be so much colder without you in it.”

“Such a tragedy,” Dax shot back, deadpan.

“Yes,” she said, very seriously. “It is.”

At long last, she withdrew her hand, studying the wetness glistening on her fingertips for a moment before raising them up to her lips. Dax felt her throat go dry, and willed herself not to blush.

“What do you say, my dear?” the Intendant asked, cool and casual as she flicked her tongue over her fingertips. “Once more, for old time’s sake?”

Refusing to let herself be intimidated, refusing to rise to the obvious bait, refusing everything this twisted psychopath was offering, Dax held her gaze. “Would it make any difference if I said ‘no’?” she muttered.

To her credit, the Intendant had the sense to look genuinely offended by that. “Of course it would!” she cried, as though Dax had just accused her of something unspeakable, far worse than the mindless slaughter of countless innocent Terrans. “We’re not primitives here, darling. What use are you to me if your heart’s not in it? Or did you forget that I have a whole station full of slaves at my command?”

Dax hadn’t forgotten at all, and she fought against herself to keep from thinking of Keiko again. Would the Intendant take her instead, if Dax refused? Would she take another Terran, someone else that Dax might have known?

“I didn’t forget that you take what you want, one way or another,” she said weakly, and struggled to keep the focus on herself, on the one person in this place who could defend herself if she needed to. “Do you really expect me to believe that if I turned around and walked out of here, you’d just lie back and watch me leave?”

The Intendant shrugged. “Believe it or don’t. I assure you, it makes no difference to me. You gave me what I was due, and I have no intention of demanding more. You’re free to do what you want. Get back on your stolen ship and fly off into the sunset, if it pleases you. Take your cargo and go crawling back to my lovely Jadzia, and do be sure to tell her how much I miss her.” She licked at her fingertips again, lazy and delicate, eyes smouldering. “I just thought you might appreciate the opportunity for a final tumble. We do work so well together, don’t we?”

Dax grunted, wanting to deny it but knowing she couldn’t sell the lie. “You’d work well with anyone,” she muttered instead.

“True enough,” the Intendant conceded. “But I really do enjoy that passion of yours. Besides…” And then, like a switch had been flipped, the fire blazing in her eyes darkened to smoke and ash and danger. “…don’t you want one last chance to sleep with _Nerys_?”

Dax flinched. “You’re not Nerys,” she said again, but her voice cracked and her hands shook, and even she didn’t know who she was trying to convince.

“Not _your_ Nerys, maybe,” the Intendant agreed cheerfully. “But we both know I’m the only one you’ll ever get.”

Dax fisted the knife, first by the handle and then by the blade, letting it stem the tide of feeling inside her. It was different now, so far removed from when she’d needed it to keep her sane, to keep her from losing control. There was none of Joran’s possession in her now, none of his rage or brutality; there was only Jadzia and her body, traitorous heat clouding her mind, and she needed it to stop. She needed to remember where she was, who the Intendant was, what was happening here. For once, she needed Joran and all his hatred, all the worst things that he could offer her, anything that could keep her strong when all she wanted was to be so utterly weak.

The blood was as hot as she was as it welled again between her fingers, and she hated that too. She hated the way the Intendant watched, hated the way her eyes went hazy and half-lidded, the way her tongue flicked across her own fingers with rising anticipation. She hated the way she looked at her, the way she smiled, the way her hips lifted from the cool sheets, an invitation and a promise with just a ghost of threat. Most of all, she hated that she refused to take Dax’s free will, that she refused to make this easy for her by taking it out of her hands.

It would be so much simpler if she was as evil in this as she was in everything else. The pressure would be off and Dax would be free. But no. Even now, the Intendant would earn her victory and make Dax bow of her own accord. She would slaughter and torture a Terran slave without so much as a second thought, would drive Dax to anger and hate, twist her until she enjoyed it and then just sit back while she screamed out her pleasure even as she sobbed her pain. She would do and say so many unforgivable things to so many people — and Dax was not nearly so innocent as Keiko and her fellow Terrans, but even she felt close to it next to the Intendant — but in this, if nothing else, she was moral.

She could have anyone on the station; hell, she could probably have anyone she wanted flown in from halfway across the quadrant if she had the mind to. Even if there were a few tough-minded souls who would dare to refuse her, Dax doubted they would live long enough to crow about it. No, the Intendant could have her pick of anyone she wanted, and so of course she took only what was offered freely. Why would she need to take by force when she had slaves falling over themselves to pledge their fealty?

Caught between disgust and desire, Dax hated her all the more for that, for daring to have even a sliver of righteousness in something as banal as this while innocents died at her feet on a daily basis. Watching her as she pleasured herself, watching her again now as she relished the taste of her own sex, watching the shudder in her chest or hearing the hitch in her throat when something Dax said made her catch her breath… the cavalcade of different reactions almost brought her to her knees.

She felt weak, shaking all over. She turned away, squeezing the knife until it cut so deep that the pain opened her fist and made her drop it, wayward beads of blood falling to deepen the stain on the carpet.

“You’re free to leave,” the Intendant said again. “If that’s what you want.”

She must have realised the crisis going on inside Dax’s head, must have known that the moment was perfect to strike, that her willpower was faltering, that she couldn’t breathe or think or move, that she was paralysed. She must have known it all, just as she must know what Dax saw when she looked at the Terran slave Keiko, just as she must know how she felt when she thought of Jadzia. She knew all of that; was there any doubt in either of their minds that she would know what she saw when she looked at her? It was written all over her face, pouring in rhythmic droplets to the carpet. It was all she was. Of course she knew.

Still, though, Dax resisted. “I will,” she said. “I will leave.”

The Intendant waved an impatient hand towards the door. “Go on, then. Just ‘turn around and walk out of here’, if that’s what you want. I certainly won’t stop you.”

Dax clenched her jaw. She was closer to the door than the bed, closer to freedom than the dark imprisonment of this place, closer to Jadzia than Joran, closer to what she needed than what she wished she didn’t want. So much closer, but the distance felt like light-years.

Two long strides. That was all it would take. Two long strides and she’d be free, away from the Intendant and her crisp sheets and the scent of her sex, away from her oversized quarters and the bloodstains on the carpet, away from the horrors of this place, and the pleasures as well. Two long strides and she’d be tearing down the corridors to the docking ring, seeking out her ship — Jadzia’s ship, packed with Jadzia’s cargo, Jadzia’s medicine, Jadzia’s hope. Two long strides and she’d be on her way back to the Badlands, leaving this place and all its nightmares far behind. Just two long strides and she would be out of the Intendant’s reach, out of her clutches, away from her. Two long strides, that was all it would take, and she would never have to think about any of this again. Just two long strides…

Four long strides, and she reached the bed.

The Intendant welcomed her eagerly, laughing into her mouth as Dax covered her body, weight and muscle bearing down against slim sinew. She silenced the laugh with a growl, swallowing them both down, swallowing the Intendant down too, ignoring the tug at her conscience, ignoring the tug at her heart and the tear in her soul, ignoring everything. 

Once she let herself, it was all too easy to forget that the woman writhing beneath her was the most powerful creature on Terok Nor, that she had sent countless Terrans to their deaths and forced the rest to work until the labour killed them on her behalf. It was all too easy to forget who she was when her lips were too busy to shape lies, when her tongue was too occupied to spit its poison, when her hands were too busy to inflict pain, when her back was pinned against the sheets, arching, pressing, pulsing. It was all too easy to forget who she was, everything she’d done and everyone she’d hurt, all too easy to forget the desert made of bones she’d crossed to get to where she was, the lives she’d taken and the lives she’d ruined. It was all too easy to forget the damage she’d done, the horrors she’d inflicted, the hellish creature that she was.

It was all too easy to ignore the truth, to drown in the lie. When she bit down on Dax’s lips, her tongue, the nape of her neck, her shoulder, her breast, every part of her she could find, when she drew blood and made her gasp and whimper in pain-touched pleasure, when she made her eyes roll back and her breath hitch and her vision start to fade… when all of that was happening all at once, it was all too easy for Dax to use the sting of it as an excuse to squeeze her eyes shut and pretend she wasn’t so terrible after all.

She didn’t resist when she was rolled over, shoved onto her back, fists tangling in the sheets and turning them bloody. She didn’t resist as fumbling hands tore at the seams of clothing that wasn’t hers, ripping and scratching and rending it from her body. She didn’t resist as sharp teeth sank into her bruised flesh and sure fingers drove inside where she was still sore and aching. She didn’t resist as she was taken again and again. Just a final tumble. Just one last chance. Even if a part of her knew it was wrong, still she didn’t resist…

…and when a familiar voice breathed her name, _“Jadzia”_ , whispered like a prayer to the Prophets, she didn’t resist when her own voice echoed back, _“Nerys”_.


	20. Chapter 20

“Well. That was unexpected.”

Dax didn’t even wait for the sweat to cool. In the time it took the Intendant to catch her breath, wrap herself up demurely in her sheets, and smile simperingly up at her, she had already climbed out of bed, pulled on the stained and torn remains of Jadzia’s clothes, and crossed the room to the door. Her body was still throbbing, sweet satisfaction undermined by the unwitting desire for more, but she was done with answering her body’s urges. She was done with letting the Intendant twist her, done with letting Joran make it easy for her, done with everything. She was done with Terok Nor and everything in it. She was _done_.

“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” the Intendant continued, lounging among her sheets.

“No, I’m not,” Dax replied, voice cold. “You knew perfectly well what would happen. You knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t be able to…”

‘…control yourself?” the Intendant offered helpfully. “You’re saying it’s my fault that you couldn’t rein in your primal urges for five seconds? It’s my fault that you gave in to what you actually wanted for the first time in your repressed little life?” She spread her arms wide. “By all means, my dear, if it will help you to sleep at night, feel free to tell yourself that as much as you want.”

Dax glared at her, but caught herself before she could get too angry, before she could indulge any of the simmering thoughts churning inside of her. The time for listening to this woman was past, she decided, and stooped to snatch up Jadzia’s knife, sliding it quickly into its sheath before she succumbed to that familiar urge.

“Stop trying to bait me,” she snapped.

“You flatter yourself. You and I both know that you never needed any baiting.” The Intendant sat up a little, the sheet slipping to expose the swell of her breast. “Did you really believe for one instant that that little display was for my benefit? My dear, I know as well as you do that you let me take you because you wanted me to take you. You wanted to close your eyes and pretend I was her. You wanted to call her name when you came. You wanted to know what it was like, how it felt to sleep with _your_ Nerys. You wanted to indulge yourself, and you did. All I did was grant you permission.”

She’d done rather more than that, Dax mused wryly, but refused to dwell on it. Whether she’d been baited or not, she supposed it made no difference in the end. What was done was done, and she couldn’t take it back just by wishing she hadn’t been so quick to give in. She couldn’t let herself regret it, not now. There would be time enough to dissect her motives later, to drown in self-loathing and shame; right now, she just needed to get out of here.

“Forget it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s over. It’s done, and so am I. And if I never see you or this place again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Oh, my poor darling Trill,” the Intendant lamented, milking her dismissal for all it was worth. “I’ll miss you too. Let’s not make this a long and protracted farewell…”

Dax ignored her. Her fingers itched, uncomfortable with the memory of the Intendant’s wet heat, of her strength and her encouragement, and she distracted herself by drawing the knife again, watching the light bounce off the blade and wiping it clean on her shirt. The fabric was already torn and stained, ruined in more ways than she could count, and she suspected that Jadzia would be far less offended by bloodstained clothing than a bloodstained knife. After all, clothes could be replicated and replaced, but weapons were forever.

“Don’t I at least get a goodbye kiss?” the Intendant taunted when it became clear that Dax had every intention of leaving without another word.

“Haven’t you had enough?" she demanded, then instantly hated herself, firstly for playing into her hand and then again as her body reminded her in no uncertain terms that it hadn’t had enough either. “I told you, I’m done, and I’m leaving. You can spend the whole night crying yourself to sleep, for all I care.”

The Intendant chuckled, but there was a threat to the sound, a kind of warning. “Oh, I’m sure I can find something more amusing than that…” she said.

The words were a warning too, careless but deliberately cryptic, and Dax had learned enough about the Intendant by now to know not to ignore it. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, feeling an uncomfortable itch in her spine.

“Nothing at all, my dear.” The Intendant chuckled again, then promptly discarded the sheets; Dax couldn’t quite keep from staring as her body lay exposed once more. “I’ll send your regards to the Terrans, shall I?”

Dax whirled around, feeling the anger rise up in her all over again. There was no desire this time, no heat to temper the rage, just pure and unadulterated fury. “Don’t touch them,” she shouted. “If I find out you’ve hurt them… if I find out you’ve…”

“You’ll do what, exactly?” the Intendant demanded. “You’ll be gone, remember?”

Dax swore. “Intendant—”

“You’re embarrassing yourself, my dear,” the Intendant interrupted with an aggravated huff. “You told me yourself that you’re done with me, and frankly, I’m getting sick of the sight of you as well. So unless you plan on testing my hospitality even more than you already have, I strongly suggest you make good on your histrionic little threats and leave.”

Dax opened her mouth to argue, to shout, even beg if that was what she had to do, but the Intendant swung out of the bed and crossed to her closet, making a point of ignoring her, and Dax could tell that nothing she would say would have any effect on her now. She was done. Just as Dax had insisted, they were both done.

Without another word, she turned and left.

She tried not to think as she stormed down the corridor, but it was impossible. It took everything she had not to turn around and go back, to throw the Intendant to the floor and put her hands to her throat. The thought sent a jolt of heat straight between her legs, and she had to stop to brace herself against the nearest bulkhead until it passed. Not this time. If she went back there, if she climbed on top of the Intendant and took her by the throat again, this time she wouldn’t stop when she came. She wouldn’t stop until she was dead.

Ultimately, that was the only reason she didn’t go back.

Kira’s voice was still ringing in her ears, lamenting the cost of taking a life. Dax had already lost so much of herself in this place; she couldn’t afford to lose any more. And so she started up again, step by step, putting as much distance between herself and the Intendant’s quarters as she could, closing her eyes and trying very hard to close her mind as well.

The further she got, the faster she found herself moving, each step coming with more and more urgency until she looked down and realised that somewhere along the line she’d started to run. It wasn’t a light jog, either, but a frenzied breakneck pace, feverish and desperate and increasingly out of breath. She was terrified, she realised, angry and frightened and a thousand other things at once, and she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. She had to get out of here. She had to keep going. She had to get to—

“My, my. Someone’s in a hurry.”

Dax skidded to a halt, startled by the sound of the voice, so close it was a miracle they hadn’t collided. She blinked, momentarily off-balance, and took a second to regain her footing.

“Garak?”

He nodded, chuckling lightly, and reached out to steady her for what felt like the thousandth time since she’d arrived on the station. “Well, well, well…” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “You do seem to pop up everywhere, don’t you?”

“Not intentionally,” she retorted, dry but with at least enough awareness to be a little self-deprecating about it. “And not any more.” She exhaled tightly. “I’m leaving.”

“You are?” He seemed genuinely surprised by that. “You mean the little bitch is actually letting you leave? Alive?”

“Looks that way,” Dax said with a shrug.

He seemed somewhat better than he had the last time they’d last crossed paths, she noted thankfully. The bruises on his face were starting to heal, and his ill mood seemed at least marginally improved. Of course, that wasn’t saying very much, and his usual bitter humour still oozed out from every reptilian pore, but he certainly seemed to be on the mend. She wasn’t stupid enough to comment on it aloud, but her expression must have given her away because he quirked a brow and stepped back.

“Do you find something amusing, my dear?”

Dax recoiled at the insincere endearment; it seemed to be something of a staple among the residents of this dark and dirty version of the universe she knew, or at least on this twisted Terok Nor. The Intendant squandered endearments like cheap synthale, forcing them down Dax’s throat one after another until her head was spinning and her stomach was sick; Garak wasn’t quite so brutal about it, but he had a deliberate precision of his own when he used them. He carried them cynically and with a hearty measure of sarcasm, like they were the only weapon he was allowed to wield without fear of them being turned back on him. He didn’t seem particularly downtrodden, at least not by the standards of the Terrans that Dax had seen in Ore Processing, but he was clearly as much under the Intendant’s heel as anyone else. Dax didn’t need Julian and Kira’s reports to tell her how much he hated that.

Coating sweet words with bitter poison was the safest form of rebellion, Dax knew. It was the only method someone like Garak had of holding on to his sanity when the world wanted nothing more than to strip down every last shred of self-respect and dignity. He may have been one of the leading Cardassian authorities in this place, probably answerable only to the Intendant herself, but Dax had learned more than enough about how the station was run to know that that was no real comfort. Anyone under the Intendant was a potential martyr to her deluded ego. Dax had learned that the hard way, and she didn’t want to imagine how many times Garak must have learned it too.

He wanted to see her dead, just like most people here seemed to — in truth, Dax wanted it too by this point — but that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, so he settled for the only thing he could do, undermining her with whispered endearments that he did not mean and never would.

Dax didn’t exactly respect this universe’s Garak, and all the less so as she remembered the damning reports Kira and Julian had made of this place. She recalled how black they’d painted him, how cut-throat and ruthless, and she shivered a little to look at him now. So no, it wasn’t respect that she felt, but more a kind of grudging regard, quiet acknowledgement of the way he held himself, and the way he’d kept her secret. Even if it was really for his own benefit far more than it was for hers, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she owed him for that, and that she owed him double for spilling his name without due cause, for getting him in trouble simply for daring to protect her.

He hadn’t done it for her; she knew that, of course. But he had still done it, and she was alive because of it. So it was only natural, she supposed, that she felt a little more compassion for him than she felt for anyone else on this destructive black hole of a station.

…well, she amended sadly, struck to the bone by unwitting memory of those poor Terrans, almost anyone.

Garak was tapping his foot, watching her through his half-closed eye. He wasn’t quite as obnoxious as the Intendant was when Dax didn’t answer a question quickly enough, and though he looked a little irritated at her for wasting his time, he didn’t seem to particularly care whether or not she said anything at all. Really, he seemed as eager to be rid of her as she was to be rid of Terok Nor.

Still, though, Dax forced herself to be polite, shaking herself out of her reverie. She let the malicious endearment slide without comment, and the question along with it, and instead just offered a quiet apology, one that they both knew was about far more than simply bumping into him or looking at his face for a moment longer than was polite.

He shrugged off the words, yawning lazily, as though her very presence was a wearying burden. “I can’t say I blame you for being in such a hurry,” he mused carelessly. “She is rather infamous for changing her mind at the last moment. You’re probably right to run for your life.”

Dax opened her mouth to tell him that she wasn’t ‘running for her life’, that she wasn’t afraid of the Intendant or anything she might do to her, that it was others she was afraid for, that all she could think of as she ran was Keiko O’Brien and the danger she was in because of her big mouth. She had to make him see that she wasn’t afraid, that she was angry and vengeful, that she still knew how to be righteous in a place as dark and twisted as this. She didn’t know why it was so important, but it was; even if it was just one man, a poor-quality reflection of a shamed and exiled Cardassian spy, someone in this awful place had to understand that she was not afraid. Someone had to see that she hadn’t let this place destroy her. Someone had to see that she was still herself. Weakened and broken and condemned, yes, but still herself. Still Dax. Someone had to see that… someone had to know… 

The words didn’t come, though. It was all she could think of, so much emotion boiling inside of her, but when she tried to actually voice it, all that came out was, “…I need your help.”

Garak, somewhat unsurprisingly, burst out laughing. “Haven’t I helped you enough?” he asked, pointing ironically at his face. The resentment had not healed quite so quickly as the bruises, it seemed, though Dax supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. “And haven’t you already paid me quite handsomely for it?”

Dax sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I really am, Garak. And it won’t happen again.” He opened his mouth in protest, but she didn’t give him a chance to say anything. “I mean it. Like I said, I’m leaving, so even if I did have some ingenious scheme to try and sell you out again, I won’t be here to see it through.”

“So you keep saying,” he muttered. “But I’m sure you’ll forgive me for being a little wary of you, my dear. Once bitten, twice bitter, as I’m sure you’ve learned yourself.”

“I know,” Dax said, turning inwards.

She did know. She’d learned that lesson more than a few times over the course of eight lifetimes, and resented it each time. As loathe as she was to admit it, she understood his reticence entirely; he would be an idiot not to feel that way, and if there was one thing Dax could say with absolute certainty about any version of Elim Garak, it was that he was no idiot. He was one of the cleverest, most calculating individuals she’d ever known, and if he had been willing to take her at her word without so much as a blink, she would have been convinced he was in league with the Intendant. So yes, she certainly could forgive him for being wary.

But then, once again, she remembered the Intendant’s cryptic threat, her assurance that she’d find other ways of amusing herself, that she would give the Terrans her ‘regards’. Dax shuddered to think of the gleam in her eye, the danger in her voice, the obvious promise there. In that moment, Dax had seen everything about her that was so different from Nerys, all the cold cruelty and hateful malice, the perverse pleasure that came from inflicting pain on unwitting innocents, the twisted joy in torturing Dax simply for daring to stand up to her; it was everything that the real Kira would die before she would let herself feel. They had all come to light in her face in that one fractured moment, and Dax couldn’t forget it.

She knew what she meant. She hadn’t exactly tried to hide it, had she? She’d wanted to strike a blow, wanted Dax to know beyond all doubt that she would have the last laugh, that she would hit Dax right where it hurt and know that there was nothing she could do about it. And Dax had left knowing it too, knowing that as soon she was gone, the Intendant would find an excuse to go back down to Ore Processing, to single out Keiko O’Brien (no, she reminded herself again: Keiko _Ishikawa_ , a Keiko who had never met Miles O’Brien and would now never know the happiness he could bring her), that she would haul her away for punishment, turn her into an unwitting volunteer to vent her frustrations. She would see her dead just to see Dax hurt, and when that happened the blood would be on Dax’s hands.

The Intendant had seen the way Dax looked at Keiko, had recognised the familiarity in her, the way she had taken her suffering so personally. Of course she had; you didn’t get to rule a place like Terok Nor without being observant. And maybe it was more than that; for all Dax knew that was the moment she had realised who she truly was. Maybe Keiko was the reason Dax’s cover had been blown, the reason why Garak had been beaten, why Dax had spent the last two days in a holding cell. Maybe she was the reason why all of this was happening. And if that was true, it was even more blood on her hands over one stupid mistake. If she’d just held her tongue a moment longer… if she’d just kept from saying her name out loud… if she’d just been a little quicker, a little smarter… if she’d just listened to Joran and not let herself care…

It didn’t matter. She knew that. What was done was done, and she couldn’t take back her mistakes. She could only do her best to make them right before she left. 

“Look,” she said, leaning in, voice quiet and urgent. “I don’t expect you to trust me. I don’t even expect you to like me very much. I just… I just need…” She stumbled over the words, awkward and clumsy.

“Well?” He hadn’t walked away yet. That was a good sign. “Out with it. Neither of us has all day, you know.”

Dax swallowed hard. “Garak, I need you to get one of the Terrans out of Ore Processing.”

For a moment or two, all he could do was stare at her, mouth half-open and eyes as wide as he could get them through the bruising, like he didn’t know how to respond to the sheer idiocy of what he was hearing. It took him a long moment to recover himself, and Dax stood there with as much patience as she could muster, grateful that he at least hadn’t turned around and stormed off the very second she’d opened her mouth.

When he finally recovered himself enough to speak, it was in a voice just as low as hers, but with none of her sobriety and a hefty weight of disbelief. “You need me to do _what_?”

“I need you to get one of the Terrans out of Ore Processing,” Dax repeated, enunciating very carefully and keeping her voice steady, so that he would know she was completely serious. “A young woman… well, youngish, I suppose. About this high, with—”

Garak held up a hand to cut off the tide of rambling. “I didn’t ask for a detailed explanation,” he said coolly.

Dax closed her mouth quickly, feeling self-conscious and very exposed under the steel of his scrutiny, acutely aware of how her hopes rested on his shoulders, and knowing that he knew it too. “Sorry,” she said, speaking very carefully, and tried to limit herself to the bare essentials. “Look, it’s really not a big deal. It’s just one slav— I mean, one _worker_. You and I both know that nobody will miss one Terran, and by the time anyone figures it out, we’ll be long gone and nobody will even think to accuse you of—”

“We?” Garak echoed, then laughed. “You want to take this Terran with you?”

Dax glared. “Of course I do. I need to get her out of here, Garak. I need to save her from this place.”

“Why?” he asked, sounding dubious. “What could have possibly possessed you to invest yourself in the fate of one miserable little…” He trailed off, seeming to realise the answer to his own question before he’d even finished asking it. “Oh, I see. You got her into trouble with the Intendant as well, didn’t you? You put her life in danger with your stupidity, and you think that if you can rescue her, you might be able to salvage what little is left of your conscience before the Intendant tears you both apart.” He smiled, all false friendliness. “Am I close?”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Dax insisted, then gave up the facade when he shot her a look that made it clear he wouldn’t even consider it if she tried to bullshit him. “All right, fine. Maybe it is that simple. But does it really matter? If I leave her there, she’ll be killed or tortured, or worse.” She sighed, trying not to think too hard about that. “Look. The overseers down in that place won’t even realise she’s gone. But if she stays, the Intendant…” She trailed off, choked up and momentarily unable to speak, then forced herself to press on, all too aware of the passing seconds. “Garak please. I’ll do the whole thing myself if I have to, but you know as well as I do that they’d have me back in that holding cell before I even made it two steps, and then we’d both be dead. But you… nobody would question you. Nobody would think twice. You could—”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupted, and she had to fight down her temper at how readily he dismissed her, how quick he was to condemn an innocent soul to death. “My charity quota has already been filled for the time being.” He didn’t need to gesture at the healing bruises on his face, or the mistrust that shone through them, but Dax knew that he was talking about his prior attempt at helping her. “Why not try again next year, if you’re still alive by then? I’m sure there’ll be an opening for a suicide mission by then.”

“Garak.”

She closed her eyes; her stubborn Trill pride insisted that she should not debase herself by begging, even for this, but the rest of her was screaming far more loudly for her to do whatever the hell it took to see this made right. It was that part that insist she go down on her knees if that was what he wanted, even offer to service him as she’d serviced the Intendant if that would get him to do what needed to be done. Surely Keiko’s life was worth more than one last twisted sex act, and if she’d thought for a second it might work, she would have done it without hesitation.

But of course Garak was not that kind of male, and offering it would waste time they didn’t have. So instead, she went with the only other thing she had left in her arsenal: reason, or what little of it she’d retained in this place.

“Look,” she pressed. “I can’t take back any of the mistakes I’ve made while I’m here. I can’t go back and stop myself from saying your name to the Intendant when I should have kept my mouth shut. I can’t go back and stop her from taking it out on you when all you were doing was trying to keep me safe. I can’t undo any of that, Garak, and I’ll apologise a thousand times if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t need your apologies,” he said. “Or your pity. Silly girl, do you really think this is the worst she’s ever done to me? At least I earned these.”

“I’m sorry,” Dax said again, ignoring the way he scowled at her. “I can’t change that either. I can’t undo what was done to you, I can’t take back the part that was my fault. I can’t go back and stop myself from…” She shuddered, remembering too vividly the heat and the stench of the Terrans in Ore Processing, the look on Keiko’s face, the weight of the Intendant’s hands on her shoulders, the moment branded indelibly on her memory, worse than anything Joran could force onto her. “I can’t change what happened. I can’t change any of my mistakes. But at least I can try and make this one right. At least I can try to save her.”

“Your concern is touching,” Garak said; his voice low but still dripped with his trademark sarcasm. “I don’t recall seeing you so deeply affected when I was the one on the receiving end of your stupidity.”

He had a point, and Dax pondered for a moment how to respond to it. She couldn’t possibly make him understand the truth of the situation, even if she’d had the time and the patience to lay it all down for him. How could she expect him to see the fundamental difference between a smart-mouthed low-life with relatively high standing and a slave with no standing at all? How could she expect him to accept that his position was a privileged one, that his downfall was as much his own fault for keeping his secrets and holding his grudges as it was Dax’s for letting his name slip in a moment of hot-tempered stupidity? And more than anything else, how could she expect him to see the difference between a few bruises and a life? She had met people like him before, countless times, and she knew already that no amount of explanation would ever satisfy him.

“Look,” she said again, after a long moment. “If I ever come back, I’ll make it up to you. Ten times over, if you want. I’ll owe you. And besides, you’ll probably be in command by then, so you can do what you want with me anyway…”

He rolled his eyes at that, not buying it for a second. “Your empty flattery knows no bounds, I see. Small wonder she was so taken with you for so long.”

Dax shrugged. “Worth a shot. I’m serious, though. I know men like you, Garak. You’ll survive. Whatever she throws at you, whatever I cost you, you’ll bounce back. But Keiko…” She swallowed over a lump in her throat. “I’m all she has. I’m the reason she’s in danger, and I’m the only one who can get her out of it. She’s not like you. She can’t help herself. Only I can. So if there’s even the tiniest shred of decency left in you…”

Garak laughed. “That’s quite the assumption, my dear,” he pointed out, quite validly.

Dax, not wanting to admit the truth of that, let out a low growl. “I don’t have time for this,” she snapped; the words came out much louder and much harsher than they should have, and she struggled to lower her voice back down to a grating whisper. “Listen to me. I’m getting her out of this hellhole, one way or another. It’ll be a whole lot easier if you help me, but make no mistake, I’ll do it alone if I have to, and I don’t care if I bring this whole station down in the process.”

“You overestimate the importance of your task, my little friend,” Garak said, sounding almost regretful. “And yourself. Nobody here is going to waste their precious time worrying about one little Terran slave or a shamed exile with more compassion than brains.” 

Dax leaped on that, the faint glimmer of hope undercutting the dismissal. “If that’s true,” she said, choosing her words very carefully, “it wouldn’t exactly pose much of a risk to you, would it?” She forced herself to smile, though it was the last thing she felt like doing, making the expression smug and cool. “And just think how much it would infuriate the Intendant…”

He seemed to mull that over for a moment, and Dax stood quietly, letting him reach his own conclusion. After a long silence, he finally let out a chuckle, seemingly amused by her gall. “Well, now,” he said. “You certainly know my weak spots, don’t you?” He shook his head, visibly impressed in spite of himself. “I’ll give you that, I suppose.”

He pondered for a long moment, looking about him with equal parts caution and thoughtfulness, and Dax wisely chose to keep her mouth shut. At this point, she supposed, he’d already made his mind up; either he would help or he wouldn’t, but she knew that she couldn’t strengthen her case any further. If she pressed it, if she laid the issue on to thickly, she would run the risk of antagonising him and blowing what little chance she had. So she stood her ground, biding her time and biting her lip, watching and swallowing salt, until at long last he heaved a miserable sigh and rolled his eyes.

“Why must I be such a bleeding heart?” he lamented, then shot Dax a pointed scowl, making it clear that the blame for this was entirely on her shoulders. “All right. You win. But only because I’m tired of running into you everywhere I go.” He lowered his voice, suddenly sober. “You do realise she’ll put a bounty on your head after this?”

“I don’t plan on sticking around,” Dax said with a shrug.

“You’re a fool if you think that’ll stop her.” He shrugged. “Frankly, my dear, after all the trouble you’ve caused me, it’s worth risking my neck just to see her put yours in a noose.”

“She’s welcome to try.”

Garak shot her a conspiratorial wink, and despite her victory Dax felt a weight settle in her stomach. “I really hope that counterpart of yours doesn’t plan on ever coming back here,” he said.

Dax refused to let herself think of Jadzia now. “I don’t care if she does,” she said. “She’s asked me to do a hell of a lot for her. She understood the risks when she sent me in here half-cocked and completely blind.”

“Oh, I’m sure she understood the risks perfectly. Just like I understood the risk that came with keeping your precious little secret.” He made a sound deep in his throat, but Dax couldn’t make out whether it was disgust or amusement. “I think we both got more than we bargained for. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Dax didn’t want to dwell on that, didn’t want to think of the trouble she’d caused for everyone in this place, didn’t want to let herself realise how much of the damage was her own doing and how little was Joran’s. “I think you of all people should know better than to underestimate anyone,” she replied.

“True enough.” He smiled, but it was cold; Dax was suddenly very aware of how reptilian the Cardassians could be sometimes. “Still, I think it says rather more about you than it does about me. You can say what you like about our little universe, my dear, and cry to whatever gods you have on that side about how violent and primitive we are… but from what I’ve seen of you since you arrived, you’re every bit as destructive as anyone on Terok Nor.” His smile turned as sinister as the Intendant’s, and Dax fought back a shiver. “And yes, I do count our friend the Intendant among that number.”

Dax had to struggle with everything she had to keep from flinching at that. It was everything that frightened her in exactly the moment she couldn’t afford to react. Garak was pushing her, testing her, and part of Dax supposed she deserved this final cut after what had happened to him. That was the side-effect of living in this universe, she thought sadly. Malice and cruelty were the only weapons to be counted on, the only blades keen enough to ensure a clean cut. He was lashing out at her, angry that she’d wormed her way into what little conscience he had, furious that she was still clinging to her own goodness, bitter and twisted and determined to see her turned the same way.

She would not let him see her flinch. She wouldn’t let him see her react at all. In an hour or less, she would be on her way back to the Badlands, back to Jadzia. She could react then. She could flinch then, and shiver and tremble. She could cry if she wanted to, or collapse under the weight of what she had become here. But right now, she had a job to do, and she would not let him distract her from it.

“You’ll need a description,” she told him, pointedly ignoring his accusation.

Still, though, she found it oddly hard to describe Keiko’s physical features without falling painfully back on what she knew about the strong Mrs O’Brien of her universe. She had to stop herself before she could say the words that came so easily to her, ‘botanist’ and ‘teacher’, ‘kind’ or ‘compassionate’, ‘intelligent’ or ‘thoughtful’. She bit her tongue to keep from describing her as strong or beautiful, patient or wise. None of those words applied to the Keiko of Terok Nor. That Keiko was a downtrodden dirt-smudged Terran, a slave without a soul, with bruises on her face and fear in her eyes. That was what Garak needed to hear. Keiko Ishikawa, not Keiko O’Brien.

Garak listened as she spoke, but didn’t offer any input of his own. Dax could tell he wanted to, though she rather suspected he was more interested in telling her to keep her voice down than in actually hearing what she had to say. It was a fair point, she supposed, but she was beyond caution and carefulness now, beyond looking over her shoulder every second just to make sure they weren’t being heard. She was beyond playing by the rules in a place that didn’t have any rules in the first place. In an hour or less, she would be light-years away. She would be safe, and Keiko would be safe with her. That was the only thing that mattered, and the only thing she would allow herself to think about.

When she had given him the best description she could and finally fallen into hoarse silence, Garak graced her with a curt nod. He was edgy now, tense and uncomfortable, and Dax wondered if he would have agreed to anything at that point just to be free from her. Well, she thought, if that was what he wanted, then so be it. She was in no condition to be picky, and provided he did what she wanted, she didn’t give a damn about his reasons. Suddenly, she understood the casual carelessness of this universe’s Benjamin Sisko a whole lot better.

“I make no promises…” he warned her as he turned away to slink off into the shadows. “And you should know that I have no intention of holding out my throat for her to slit on behalf some Terran slave. If the task is easy enough, you have my word that I’ll attempt it. But if it’s not, then you’ll just have to make peace with your mistakes another way. I’m not putting any of my appendages onto the Intendant’s chopping block for the sake of your wretched conscience.”

“I don’t expect you to,” she said, but didn’t add that she had long since given up on expecting any kind of altruism from anyone here. “You’ve got an hour. Do you know where my ship is?”

He laughed heartily at that, as though she’d just asked him if he knew where his own head was. “Dearest, I know where everything is,” he said, without a trace of false modesty. “And that includes a few things that even Her Highness doesn’t know about.” He glanced back at her for a moment, eyes sparkling with mischief and just a hint of potential threat. “Never underestimate a Cardassian, my self-involved little friend.”

“Or a tailor,” Dax muttered under her breath, hushed though she had no doubt that he would hear it; if he did, though, he didn’t think to ask what she meant. “You’ve got an hour,” she said again.

“I won’t even need half of one,” he insisted, and left.

An hour was a lot of time to kill, especially in a place as murky and filled with darkness as Terok Nor. Dax thought about going back to the bar, to the place that she knew as Quark’s, the familiar surroundings even without its familiar bartender. She thought about drinking herself blind once more just for the vindictive joy of sucking the Intendant’s tab dry and getting away before she found out. It was an enticing thought, but she ultimately decided against it for fear that the ruthless narcissist would find some innovative way to twist the whole thing into a love story to her ego. _‘Oh, the poor dear,’_ she would sigh. _‘Drowning her sorrows because she misses me so much’_. It wouldn’t be true, of course, but then the truth had never been much of a friend to the Intendant before.

Besides, as much as her inner Curzon enjoyed a good drink or ten, the part of her that remembered Torias was already thinking of the journey back to the Badlands; it wasn’t a particularly long or treacherous one, but the headstrong pilot had taken his career too seriously to let Dax think of flying drunk. He had been a reckless young man, yes, stupid in his own way, just like Curzon was — like they all were, really; historically speaking, Daxes had never had much in the way of common sense — but his career as a pilot was the one thing in the galaxy he would not compromise on, and Dax had inherited that just as surely as she’d inherited Curzon’s love for liquor.

That damned career had been his undoing, of course, and Dax found herself inexplicably struck by nostalgia as she stalked down the half-empty corridors, angry and sorrowful in equal measure.

As a rule, nostalgia was no friend to a joined Trill. A fondness for the symbiont’s past lives was to be expected, of course, and even encouraged, but never through the lens of nostalgia; potential hosts were made aware from the beginning to always take past memories with the intention of learning from them and building from their foundations, to focus on experiences rather than emotions. One of the most crucial things that young initiates learned during their training was that no individual host was more important than any other. A galaxy-class athlete was no more worthy of note than a sexless engineer. Every host’s contribution was unique, and they were all worth the same in the end, all lending themselves in their own way to the symbiont’s collated development.

As an initiate, the young Jadzia had always struggled with that idea, and it had become all the more difficult when she was assigned the great Curzon Dax as her field docent. How could she, with her wealth of useless knowledge and her complete lack of worldliness ever hope to do half as much as someone like him? How could anyone expect her to stand up next to him and offer anything at all?

If she was honest with herself, even now she still didn’t think she could. Even now, she found herself falling back on Curzon’s experience and wisdom, on his passion and his lust for life, where she should have been carving out a life of her own. She leaned on him far more than any joined Trill should ever lean on a past host, and though she knew she should be beyond that now, it was still more than she could do to shake him off, or indeed to want to. Curzon had achieved great things, after all. Like Emony before him, and Lela before her, he had given the Dax symbiont so much strength, so much life. Before she was joined, Jadzia hadn’t had the first idea of what life was, much less how she was supposed to live it; wasn’t it only natural, then, that she would lean on the teachings of those who had gone before? Wasn’t it to be expected that the shy young thing would sometimes let herself get lost in Curzon’s lust for life or Lela’s sobriety or Torias’s vivacity?

Suddenly, inexplicably, she wanted nothing more than to get back to the Badlands, to storm into the rebel camp and tackle Jadzia into the biggest hug either of them had ever known. She wanted to talk to her about all of this, to discuss their shared experiences, their past lives, all the differences and similarities between them. She wanted to talk about Curzon, about Lela, about all of them. She wanted to talk about Torias, too, maybe more than anything else. She wanted to interrogate her, she realised, to ask about Torias, about Nilani Kahn, about why she’d chosen exile.

Dax had always considered herself pretty weak by Trill standards, at least since passing into Jadzia. She was far too prone to nostalgia, to leaning on Curzon or falling back on Emony or wishing to be Lela; she was too desperate to live up to the glory-touched histories of the symbiont’s former hosts, and not focused enough on living her own. She was the first to take responsibility for Curzon’s recklessness and occasional stupidity, to carry the weight of his indiscretions on her shoulders and stain her soul with the blood of his vengeance. Had the opportunity arose with Kor and Koloth and Kang, she might even have killed for him. That alone was more than enough to make her feel guilty, ashamed, to make her wonder if she really did deserve to be a host after all. What good was she to the symbiont inside of her if all she could do was cling to someone they both already knew? Dax had known Curzon far better than Jadzia could ever hope to; there was nothing new for either of them in the way she clung to him, holding him close like a frightened child with an old blanket, hoping his stories would chase her own weakness away.

But even that, shameful as it was, was nothing next to exile. Far better to drown in a sea of past lives than throw away the chance of future ones. Dax couldn’t make sense of it; even she, as stubborn as she was in the way she leaned on Curzon, couldn’t imagine losing herself so completely to the feelings of a past host that she would give up everything she’d worked so hard for. Her whole existence had been in pursuit of this, of being joined, of becoming one of the lucky few. Her whole existence, incomplete until the moment she was joined, until the moment she realised what it meant to be a host.

Yes, she stumbled sometimes. Of course she did. She was still young, still learning, still finding herself and picking apart the shadows of Jadzia from the plasma-hot firelight of Curzon and the others. Of course she faltered occasionally, of course she fell. But there was a critical difference between stumbling and drowning. Dax might lose sight of herself sometimes, but she never lost sight of what she’d done or how hard she’d fought for it. She had an obligation; every joined Trill did, but Jadzia felt it deeper than most, because she had reapplied to the programme. They had washed her out, called her ‘unsuitable’ and thrown her aside. She was finished, or she should have been, but by some impossible miracle she had convinced them that she shouldn’t be. She had convinced them to let her back in, to let her succeed, and the weight of her obligations hung heavier on her than anyone else because of it.

Had Jadzia been through that too?, she wondered. Had she suffered the humiliation of rejection, followed by the triumph of success against all the odds? If she hadn’t, Dax supposed it might go some way to explaining why she would be so willing to risk exile for reassociation. Without that extra incentive, maybe Dax herself would be even weaker than she was already; maybe she would find herself combing the galaxy for Curzon’s old lovers, aching to reignite old flames. Maybe. But what if Jadzia had been through the same? What if she had taken the very same path that Dax had, been through the same struggles, laboured under the same desperation, felt the same urgency? What if she had been through exactly the same life? What could have compelled her to give it away so willingly, so freely?

Whoever held the Kahn symbiont now must be a hell of a woman, she thought sadly, to justify that kind of sacrifice.

Pushing the thought out of her mind, afraid of getting caught up in a different kind of nostalgia, she forced herself to focus on getting to the docking ring. An hour was a long time to wait, but she didn’t want to run the risk of getting sidetracked somewhere else, or drawing unwanted attention to herself when she was so close to escaping at last. Besides, as unlikely as it was that Garak would keep his word and show up early, she wanted to have Jadzia’s ship ready just in case. In truth, she rather doubted he’d keep any part of his promise, more likely finding some excuse to sneak away and never be seen again, but if there was one thing all the Dax hosts agreed on, it was that it paid to be prepared for any outcome.

When she reached the ship, docked safely at one of the airlocks, she didn’t go inside. She couldn’t stomach the thought of sitting in that cockpit, so unbearably spacious after all those hours in a cramped holding cell but so excruciatingly tiny after all that time in the Intendant’s oversized bed. It would feel lonely either way, too big or too small, and a wave of emotion that she couldn’t quite make sense of hit her squarely in the chest.

She hated it here, hated this station and the people who lived here, hated everything it represented and everything it made her; she wanted nothing more than to be free, to fly off and never look back, to get to the Badlands, to Jadzia and this universe’s Benjamin Sisko, to a corner of this universe where the worst crime was a bad attitude and a loud mouth. She just wanted to get into that ship and get the hell out of here, but the cockpit was so small and so big, so exposed and so confined, so vastly contradicting that her breath caught hard in her chest and the airlock walls started to close in around her. Suddenly, she felt claustrophobic, and for a long and terrifying moment she couldn’t breathe at all.

In a bid at distracting herself from the unexplainable feeling, she drew Jadzia’s knife out of its sheath. For once, she had no plans to actually use it, on herself or anyone else, but it brought a kind of calm to go through the motions, to pull it out and hold it, feeling its weight against her palm, fingers curled around the handle, watching the dim light as it bounced and cascaded over the shining surface of the blade, tracing the curve of it with her fingertips (but carefully this time, never too close), perfect precision along the edges and gleaming beauty reflected off the flat. It was a work of art, she thought, and probably the only thing in this whole damn universe that she would truly miss when she finally went back home.

She knew that it was the Joran in her that was so enthralled by the weapon, intoxicated by the way it caught the light, the razor edges and the pointed tip. She knew that her breathless adulation was really his, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. So what if he appreciated a finely crafted blade? So what if he filled her head with all the terrible things she could do with it? So what? She wasn’t going to, so why should she care that he teased her with the idea?

Holding the thing calmed her, kept her from losing her mind as she sat there and waited for Garak. She could worry about the shades-of-grey morality of it another day, if at all; right now she just needed to keep herself together, to stay calm, to remember how to breathe, to keep herself sane. If that meant listening to Joran for once, then so be it. If the safer option right now was to heed the advice of a sadist, then that was what she’d do. Curzon had led her wrong often enough, hadn’t he? So let Joran lead her right for a change. He had helped to give her some of the strength she needed to stand up against the Intendant, hadn’t he? She hadn’t lost herself to his fury then; she hadn’t even come close. She had known who she was, and what she felt; he had guided her, but she had been in control. This was no different. The knife brought her comfort, and she didn’t care why.

True to his word (though Dax rather doubted he was true to much else) Garak made his appearance long before the hour was up.

She wasn’t entirely sure whether the timeliness was a good sign or a bad one, but he wasn’t exactly being subtle about his approach. In fact, she heard him coming before she caught sight of him, recognising in his heavy footsteps the familiar Cardassian swagger that the Garak of her universe pulled off so effortlessly. It was a signature sound, and one not easily ignored or unnoticed, echoing morbidly down the narrow airlock corridor, and Dax felt her heart leap into her throat to hear it, already on edge with anticipation that gripped her fast by the lungs and squeezed her heart until it threatened to break.

Acting on instinct, she slid the knife back into its sheath, naive little Jadzia taking over in her excitement and shoving Joran and his influence out of the way not even stopping to think that she might want to keep it close at hand until she and Keiko were safe, until she was certain that everything was all right. Neither of them were safe until they’d cleared the station, and somehow the silly little girl in her thought it was a good idea to put her only weapon away.

 _This is what happens when you listen to her instead of me,_ Joran warned, and Dax tried not to think about how right he was.

Garak’s expression was neutral when the doors slid open to bring them face-to-face, but when he saw the eager optimism painting her face, he broke into an amused little half-smile, one that Dax sorely hoped would bring with it good news. He looked her up and down for a moment or two, as if to make sure she hadn’t been replaced by a ghost or a doppelgänger… which, Dax had to concede, wasn’t exactly implausible in a universe that already held two versions of her.

“My dear, you look lovely as—”

“Well?” she interrupted, not bothering to let him finish. It was all she could do to keep from tackling him to the ground and demanding that he hand over Keiko immediately, and certainly far more than she could manage to feign pointless civilities. “How did it go? Where is she? What—”

“Gracious me, that’s a lot of questions,” he muttered dismissively, with the kind of peevish aggravation that she’d come to recognise as characteristic of him. “Don’t you have manners on your side? I went through a lot for you, you know, and I would appreciate a moment to catch my breath. If it’s not too much to ask for.”

Dax growled her impatience, but didn’t antagonise him. She stood there, clenching and unclenching her fists, bouncing from one foot to the other, and trying not to look too irritable as he leaned against the bulkhead and watched her through half-lidded eyes. She tried to look past him, to glance over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of Keiko, or at least see if he was being pursued, but his neck ridges obscured her view, and he obstructed the rest of the corridor quite effectively with his width. She couldn’t see a thing, and she didn’t have the time or the patience to ask him to move. 

“Where is she?” she asked instead, for the second time. “I need to go, and you know I don’t have time for games.”

Garak’s eyes turned to ice when she met them, colder even than usual. “Silly me,” he said, almost to himself. “Where are my manners? You sent me out on a mission of mercy, at no minor risk to my own life, and here I am just wasting all your precious time by daring to take a second to catch my breath. What a cad I must be. What an unforgivable scoundrel…”

Dax pinched the bridge of her nose, fought the urge to draw the knife and threaten an answer out of him. “Garak.”

“Quite right,” he replied, nodding with exaggerated seriousness. “You want to be on your way, and to be perfectly blunt we’ll all be much better off without you, so—”

“Garak!”

But even as she said it, she knew. All of a sudden, her pulse was racing, heart hammering desperately at the walls of her ribcage, and she knew why. He didn’t have to say the words; she could read the answer as clear as artificial sunlight on the ridges of his face, that sinister reptilian face, could sense it crackling underneath the words he hadn’t said, could taste the bitterness of it, the pain and the rage and the sorrow.

She knew. She _knew_.

But she needed to hear it. It didn’t matter what she knew, she needed to hear the words, needed to hear it come out of his damned Cardassian mouth, needed to hear him say it. She needed to hear it, needed to feel the truth squeeze out what little air still remained in her lungs, needed him to say it out loud, to make it real and turn it into something she couldn’t deny or hide from. She needed to hear it, and it was only because she couldn’t believe it until the words were actually out there that she found herself asking the question again, and then again and again, over and over until it was all she could hear, all she could think, the only thing she had left.

“Where is she? Where is she?” She shook him. “ _Where the hell is she_?”

Garak wasn’t smiling any more. But then, he didn’t have to. She could see the sadism flowing across his face like a corrupt data stream, like a virus eating away at anything it touched, destructive and ugly. And still he had the gall to look at her like she owed him, still he had the gall to step back, to spread out his arms, to frown and sigh, his cold Cardassian features twisted into an apology that meant less than nothing. Still he had the gall to look at her at all, and if there was anything left in her, she would have taken out that knife and driven it straight through the cutting obsidian of his eyes. If there was anything left in her… if there was anything left at all…

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” he asked, cool and calculating, and entirely too casual.

She heard herself choke out a rasping “no”, but it was hazy and very far away.

It didn’t matter. She knew. She knew, she knew, she _knew_. He didn’t need to say it; they both knew that. But then, he did need to say it, because she needed him to say it. She needed it. She needed to hear it. She needed it. He had to give her that, didn’t he? If nothing else, he had to give her that. She needed him to make it real, to turn it into something she couldn’t escape, to make it true and make her believe it, to force-feed her with the facts, the truth, the reality of it, to beat her with it until there was nothing left of her, until there was nothing left, until… 

He needed to say it. She needed him to give her that. He needed to say the words, to tell her that it was real and it was true and it had happened and _no no no you’re wrong you have to be wrong it can’t be she can’t be she can’t be she can’t be—_

“Dead.” He shrugged. “Sorry about that.”


	21. Chapter 21

“…what?”

Garak didn’t so much as bat an eyelid as Dax’s knees gave out underneath her and he didn’t offer even a word of compassion as she crumpled helplessly to the floor. Her entire body had gone numb, limp and limbless; she tried to brace against the wall or the floor, against anything she could find, but she couldn’t move her hands. She couldn’t do anything.

“Did I stutter?” he asked, as cold and unsympathetic as the Intendant.

She heard her own voice reply, though she wasn’t aware of speaking at all. “No. Yes. No. I don’t… _what_?”

“I said ‘she’s dead’,” he repeated with a sigh. “Which means that your lovely little suicide mission was all for nothing. Which means that you have no more business here. Which means that you should get into that precious ship of yours and leave this place before your little Terran friend isn’t the only one who’s dead.”

Dax’s faltering brain registered exactly one word of that diatribe. “Nothing,” she echoed numbly, once and then again. “Nothing?”

She tried to look up, to meet his eyes, to make some sense of the chaos crashing down on her head, but she couldn’t see any more than she could move. Belatedly, she realised her eyes were filmy with tears. She couldn’t let them fall, though; that much she knew for certain. She couldn’t let Garak see her cry, couldn’t let anyone in this forsaken place see her cry. Terok Nor didn’t deserve her tears. She was so close to her ship — Jadzia’s ship — so close to leaving this place completely. She could cry then. A few steps and she would be safe and alone, and she could cry all she wanted. But not now. Now here. Not in front of him.

“Nothing,” he repeated, huffing impatiently.

Bile rose in her throat. “It was all for nothing.”

He grimaced. “As entertaining as this is, my dear, I have a station to keep running, and I don’t have all day to sit here and coddle you. In fact, wasn’t it scarcely half an hour ago that you were the one complaining that you didn’t have the time to indulge me?”

Dax couldn’t remember anything about time, but the one thing she knew she didn’t have was strength; she didn’t have the strength to argue with him, didn’t have the strength to lift herself up off the floor, didn’t have the strength to climb back into Jadzia’s ship and fly away. Just moments ago, all she’d wanted was to get Keiko into that damned ship and get them both as far away from Terok Nor as possible; just a few minutes ago, it was all she could think of, but now she couldn’t think of anything. She couldn’t think of the ship, couldn’t think of leaving, couldn’t think at all.

The air felt thin around her, and impossibly cold. Even though she was sure the temperature hadn’t changed at all, she felt like icicles were tearing at her lungs every time she tried to draw breath, like she was being stabbed and frozen, and she felt sure that she would die from the cold long before she would die from the lack of air. The whole universe, hateful as it was, seemed to have imploded, collapsing in on itself again and again until there was nothing left but this, the airless cold and those two awful words.

“She’s _dead_.”

Garak sighed again, sounding frustrated. “Yes, she is,” he said. “Do you really want to to sit here for the rest of the day sulking about it?” He shook his head. “You’re welcome to do that if you like, but I’m afraid you’ll be mourning alone.”

“At least someone will be,” Dax heard herself say. “At least someone will mourn.”

Garak shrugged. “I suppose it’s only fitting that it be you,” he remarked. “You said it yourself, my dear: you’ve done nothing but made mistakes since you got here. This poor unfortunate creature is just one more, and there’s no point in crying about her now, is there? You didn’t shed a tear for my beautiful face, did you? What’s one dead Terran?”

Dax closed her eyes, gave up the struggle, and let the tears fall. To hell with her pride. To hell with Terok Nor. To hell with Garak and the Intendant. To hell with—

“Everything,” she whispered.

He chuckled, more to himself than at her, and the malice in his voice stung between her eyes, cruelty carving viciously through the salt that obscured her vision. “You’re all the same on that side,” he muttered, sounding almost thoughtful. “So full of morals and scruples. It’s such a waste.”

It took a great deal of effort for Dax to haul herself back up to her feet, and even then she had to lean against the bulkhead to keep from sliding back down again, from losing her footing and her balance, from losing herself and slipping back into the fetal position. If she fell again, she would be here forever; she didn’t have the strength to haul herself upright a second time. She felt shattered, like someone had reached into her body and pulled out all of her insides without even breaking the skin, like there was nothing left inside of her but emptiness and the memory of how it felt to be full.

It didn’t even have the decency to hurt. That was the worst part. She could handle pain. She had learned during her stay here to thrive on pain, to open herself up to it and welcome it, to take it inside her and let it strengthen the empty space where her insides once were. If she could just bring herself to hurt a little, she knew she would be all right. But she didn’t. She didn’t hurt at all.

“Was it her?” she forced out, voice hoarse and scratchy, tongue laced with poison. “Was it the Intendant?” She closed her eyes. “Did she… was she… did she do it herself?”

Garak’s eyes were empty as they fixed on her. “Actually,” he said, simple and matter-of-fact, “I did it for her.”

Dax slumped pathetically back to the floor. She would never get back up now. “You.”

He smiled, but it was hollow and humourless. “Me,” he affirmed quietly. “I’m afraid our friend the Intendant isn’t as brainless as either of us would like to believe. She saw your mark all over me before I could get a word out. And of course she knew immediately why you’d sent me there…” He let out a humourless laugh. “I suppose she thought it would be some kind of poetic justice. Frankly, I never had much taste for poetry. As you know, I’m much better at simply following orders.”

“So you did,” Dax said hollowly.

He nodded. “I’m sorry, my dear, but the sad fact is, I’m just not like you. In the first, I’m not burdened with that troublesome conscience of yours, and in the second, I don’t have the luxury of a ship all docked and waiting to take me away from this damnable place. You saw what happened the last time I dared to defy her; in fact, you had a hand in that too. And to be perfectly blunt, my dear—”

“—you value your own life more highly than mine,” Dax finished for him. “Or hers.” She remembered all too well the last time he’d said that, justifying his choice to keep her secrets silent for fear that the Intendant might take out her displeasure on him. She supposed she couldn’t really blame him for his self-preservation, but that didn’t stem the tide of bitterness. “From the sound of it, you value your life more highly than most things.”

“You’ll find that most humanoids do,” he remarked, with some small measure of kindness. “It’s that pesky survival instinct, I’m afraid.”

Dax wasn’t listening to him any more. She could barely hear the words over the pounding her heart and the rush of blood in her ears, and it was more than she could do to process the sad truth of what he was saying, the heartbreaking fact that this was reality, this was the world he lived in. Survival was so close to the surface of everything in this place; where Dax came from, it was taken for granted, naturally assumed, but here it was a daily struggle, even among those highest on the hierarchy.

Maybe on another day, she would have felt sorry for him. Maybe if he didn’t have blood on his hands, if he wasn’t staining her with it too, if they both weren’t soaked red and dark, drowning in death and destruction. Maybe. But what good was ‘maybe’ when all of those things were true? Worthless, useless, and as dead as Keiko. Where was that pesky survival instinct when she needed it? Where was the value of her life while Garak was weighing his own against the Intendant’s?

“I should have done it myself,” she murmured. “I should have gone down there myself and done it. I should have—”

“Now, now,” Garak sighed. He sounded at least somewhat sympathetic, but she couldn’t bear the smile still lifting his lips. “Don’t get all high and mighty about it. If you’d tried to do the deed yourself, she would’ve just made you kill the little wench instead, then strung you up right beside her for having the gall to go back there in the first place. She’s already had her fun with you, remember? So I doubt she’d care one way or another whether you fly off into the sunset or get turned into an ‘example’.”

“Neither do I,” Dax said, and she hated how completely she meant it.

“Oh, stop that.” He sighed, and for just a moment the smile fell from his face, replaced by something deeply sad; it wasn’t quite regret, but it was probably the closest thing he would ever allow himself. “Look. Your little friend would be dead either way. At least this way, I’m the one with blood on my hands. Her precious Prophets know, there’s enough on them already.” He turned his face away, seemingly unable to look at her for the first time since she’d arrived. “You get to keep yours clean. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much to someone like you, but believe me, it’s a whole lot more than most people get from this place. So take it.”

Dax didn’t know what to say. It was a miracle she’d been able to say as much as she had until now, and though she wanted nothing more than to scramble back up to her feet, to drag her wounded soul back into that damned ship and fly away from here, her legs wouldn’t work. Nothing worked. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t stand, couldn’t breathe. She tried to close her eyes, because at least they still worked, but even when she did all she could see was Keiko’s face, the fear and the pain, the broken-down sorrow of a soul that had only ever known a life of slavery and suffering.

That was all she would ever know, Dax realised, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She would never know that there was a universe out there where she was happy, where her heart and her soul and her life were full. She would never know that there was a universe out there where her last name was O’Brien, where she was a wife and a mother, a botanist and a teacher, where she was intelligent, where she was respected and appreciated and loved. She would never know how much potential she had inside of her, how wonderful she could be if she’d only had the chance. She would never know any of it. She would never know anything ever again.

It was her fault. Whatever Garak said about the blood being on his hands alone, it wasn’t true. It was Dax’s fault the Intendant had singled Keiko out, her fault for not giving her the public approval she wanted, for not nodding and smiling and playing the perfect puppet in front of the rabble of workers. It was her fault for clinging to her morals, for clinging to the tiny shred of herself that was still Jadzia, that still remembered Curzon’s voice as he told her what honour was. She had tried so hard not to become a monster, not to be driven made by violence and bloodlust, and she’d still ended up a murderer.

That was the worst part. She hadn’t yielded to any of the terrible things Joran had wanted her to feel. She had fought with everything she had, fought against the twisted instincts, the feral urges, the need to spill blood and shatter bones and destroy destroy _destroy_. She had held tightly to herself, to Curzon and Jadzia and as much of Dax as she could, holding on and striving against everything his influence brought out in her, pushing through the taste of blood left in her mouth after dark dreams, resisting the pulse of arousal as her fingers tightened around the Intendant’s throat, forcing down the urge to squeeze until she stopped breathing, stifling the exhilaration as he told her that she liked it.

She had fought and resisted and drowned out everything he’d thrown at her, silenced the seductive whispers in her mind, letting him feed her temper only when she was sure it was justified. She had done everything she could, had been as righteous and honest and true to herself as anyone could have hoped for. She’d done everything right. And that had been Keiko’s undoing. Not the brutality or the destruction or the want, not the rage or the fury or the hatred. None of that at all.

Keiko’s grave wouldn’t be dug from anger or violence. It would be dug from hope and faith.

Dax didn’t know how long she sat there, lost in thought and guilt and sorrow, but it was long enough for Garak to lose what little patience he might have once had with her. She’d barely even remembered that he was there at all, and so it startled her out of her unwanted reverie when strong Cardassian hands wrapped around her arms and hauled her bodily back up to her feet. She couldn’t support herself at first, still too shaken and too weak, so he held her in place. He didn’t exactly support her, but he refused to let her slide back down, hands heavy and thick around her arms and eyes dark as death as he glared at her.

“As lovely as this is,” he said as she struggled to regain some kind of balance, “I have other places I need to be. And so do you, my dear. You can feel sorry for yourself on your own time, but right now, I would very much like to see you on your way without sullying my hands any further.”

“How can you be so cold?” Dax asked.

He looked her square in the eye, and she saw so much conflict in his face that it would have stolen the breath from her lungs if they were capable of holding any.

“Because I have to be,” he said, very quietly. “If I wasn’t, I’d end up like your little friend.”

“Survival instinct,” she said weakly, remembering his words of a moment ago, and he affirmed with a sad little nod.

“I’d sooner be cold than dead.” The words were an apology, but Dax never got the chance to accept it; he was shoving her forwards before she could even catch her breath, much less speak. “Now go. Get into that ship of yours, and get out of here. Go back to your universe, or your friends in this one, or anywhere you want. Just go. And don’t ever come back.”

Dimly, distantly, Dax realised that she wanted to stay. All of a sudden, she could think of nothing else but hunting down the Intendant, finding her, and confronting her even if it cost her life. She had to make her pay for what she’d done, for Keiko, for the other Terrans, for Garak and Dax herself, for every hurt she’d ever inflicted, every life she’d ever taken, every dark thing that had ever happened to anyone. She had to make her pay. She had to pay… she had to… 

_Someone_ had to.

She knew it was probably Joran, feeding her as he always did with rage and violence, but right now even he felt small and insignificant. He was a terrible creature, she knew, capable of terrible things, but at that moment there was so much chaos and horror inside of her that his misdeeds barely even registered at all. After the horrors of this place, the reality of her own experiences and the guilt on her own shoulders, Dax didn’t have the strength to be sickened by him any more. At least he was dead. That was more than she could say for the Intendant, or herself.

She felt numb and confused, unable to process anything at all, even the lurch of motion as Garak bustled her through the airlock onto the ship. Her head spun, and as he held her steady for a moment or two, supportive but far from gentle, it was almost more than she could manage just to look down and stare with a dissociated kind of fascination as her hands started to shake.

“Go,” he told her again, and then she was alone.

She had no memory of staggering into the cockpit, no memory of collapsing into the pilot’s seat or fumbling with the strange alien controls, no memory of laying in a course for the Badlands or anywhere else. She had no memory of anything, only of the way her hands trembled as they flew across the console, independent of her mind, and the discordant humming of the engines as the little ship carved a lazy path through the void of space.

Everything felt disjointed, like the whole universe really was a shattered mirror, like she was looking at it through fractured pieces of glass. It was all wrong. It was all so very wrong.

At some point, she must have drawn Jadzia’s knife out of its sheath, because when she finally came back to herself, the weapon was laid out flat on the helm console and she was staring down at it through a dull haze of confusion, uncomprehending and utterly blank.

What was it doing there?, she thought. Why had she pulled it out if she wasn’t going to use it? She stared at it some more, trying to make sense of that. Why hadn’t she drawn it across her palm? Why hadn’t she raised blood like she had so many times before? Why hadn’t she used the sharp wet slide to calm the torrent of fury that howled and screamed inside her?

It was a very, very long time before she realised that it was because there was no torrent to calm. There was no fury, no howling and no screaming. There was no anger, no hatred, none of the violence that had haunted her for so long, since Joran’s memories had awoken within her. There was nothing inside of her at all, just a vast empty void. She was completely hollow, numb and lost, a soundless black hole where her heart used to beat and venom where her blood used to flow.

She couldn’t feel, and she couldn’t think. Nothing made sense. The cockpit, the ship, the vacuum of space, the universe she was in and the one she’d come from, her friends and her enemies, life and death, pleasure and pain, blood and bruises… none of it made sense. None of it. Nothing.

_Nothing._

Was that really what she was now? Was it really all she could feel? She stared down at the knife, half-blind, unaffected and unmoved. She willed herself to pick it up, to feel its weight, to let the shining steel seduce her just like it always did, to let the blade bring her back to herself. It was so good at that; all she needed to do was pick it up. Just pick it up, and it would do the rest. Just pick it up…

But she couldn’t even do that. Her hands, bracing and trembling against the edge of the console, would not move; they were locked in place, holding her upright and there wasn’t wasn’t enough emotion left in her to try and push past that, to try and force herself into motion. She didn’t have the strength even to try. And so she didn’t. She didn’t try, and she didn’t move. Her hands stayed where they were, and so did the knife.

Instead, she forced herself to think of the Intendant, tried to wrap her head around what she’d done, the pain she’d inflicted, the lives she’d taken and the damage she’d wrought. She thought about how the little tyrant had treated her, the way she’d used her, turned her into a tool and a toy, paraded her around like a martyr, burned her at the stake for crimes she’d refused to commit. She tried to muster some anger at all of that, but it just came back to the other side, back to the hole inside of her, and all she could think of was how she was the one who had let the Intendant do those things to her. She did it for Jadzia’s medicine, or she did it because Joran wanted her to, or she did it because the Intendant looked like Nerys, she did it for a hundred different reasons, a thousand different people… but she still did it.

So many places to lay the blame, so many different names for her shame, but never her own. Oh no, never Dax. So many excuses, but what good were any of them in the end?

An explosive laugh cut loudly through the air.

Dax frowned, startled by the sound. She wasn’t feeling particularly amused; in fact, she wasn’t feeling anything at all, and she couldn’t help wondering where the hell the sound had come from. Was there a stowaway on board? Some stupid soul trying to sneak away from Terok Nor, hiding under the helm console or behind the transporter or somewhere equally clever? No, that was ridiculous. But what if…

What if it was Keiko?, she thought, and choked. What if she wasn’t really dead? What if Garak had made up some elaborate story so that he could smuggle her onto the ship without risking detection? He was an expert at deception, wasn’t he? How hard was it to double-bluff a shell-shocked and half-mad Trill? Of course he had… of course he had… of course…

Of course he hadn’t. How could it be Keiko, when Dax was the one who had laughed? How could it be Keiko when Dax was still laughing, even now, hysterical and hopeless and so completely lost?

She waited for the explosion to pass, for the madness to subside, for the lack of air to drive a shred of sanity back into her, waited until the hysteria caught in her throat, until she pitched forward and hit the floor, until she heaved and gasped and choked, until she could breathe again and dragged herself back up into her chair. She waited for the truth to hit, waited for reality to come crashing down, waited for the half-crazed hope to dissolve and bring an explosion of tears in the wake of the laughter.

But it didn’t. The laughter was gone, but there were no tears. She thought of Keiko, remembered that she was dead, that she wasn’t here, that there was no elaborate double-bluff. She remembered her, remembered that it was her fault she was dead. She remembered everything, but still she couldn’t cry. Keiko was dead. She wasn’t here, she wasn’t hiding, she was _dead_. She was dead and Dax was alive, and it was all her fault, all her doing and why why why wasn’t she crying?

She didn’t know. She still couldn’t think. She hit the side of her head with the heel of her hand, once and then again, struggling to tap into some corner of herself, Jadzia or one of the others. Curzon and Emony; they were the strong ones, competitive and courageous and willing to do whatever it took to get things done. Lela and Tobin, the rational thinkers, clever and adaptable; they could help her, couldn’t they? Torias, who knew how to keep his cool even when things were at their worst; Dax remembered how calm he’d been as he realised he was going to die. Even Joran, if that was what it took to feel something; bloodlust and violence was better than nothing, wasn’t it? It was better than being hollowed-out and numb, better than not knowing how to function. She wanted to clear her head. She wanted to think. She wanted to feel.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t think, and she couldn’t feel, and even remembering poor deceased Keiko wasn’t enough to move her. If one dead Terran and seven dead hosts couldn’t make her feel, what could?

“You’re in shock,” she said to the empty ship, then laughed again as the words reverberated uselessly off the bulkheads.

Seven lifetimes — eight counting Joran — and she was in shock. Even simple Jadzia had been through her share of stresses; she had endured all the strain and chaos of Starfleet training, had suffered through the Trill initiate program twice, had been built up and broken down more times than she could count. She had been through field training with the great Curzon Dax, for pity’s sake, and still come out the other side without so much as a scratch. By her very nature as a joined Trill, she was a veritable expert in the art of putting things behind her almost as soon as they happened, in moving on and moving past, in _moving_. It was who she was, ever aware of the fleeting nature of her existence, important but oh so brief. She knew how to handle the unexpected, and even the traumatic; none of this should be new to her.

But it was. She tried to think about it again, to process it, to make sense of what had happened, what she’d heard and what she’d seen, what she’d thought and what she’d felt, tried to hone in on the anger and the pain, the helplessness and the disbelief, but she couldn’t. Her mind shut down and what might once have been thoughts turned to sludge and silence in her head.

All she could think about was how tiny the cockpit was, how primitive the computer systems were, how the pilot’s seat was too small and too hard, how far she was from any place she might call home. Stupid, pointless things. Silly things, nonsense things, things that had no meaning, things she normally wouldn’t even think about at all. It was absurd, more crazy even than the laughter.

Keiko O’Brien was dead in this universe. That was all Dax’s fault, and all she could think of when she tried to process it was how damn uncomfortable her chair was.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the viewscreen, over and over and over, hollow and empty and wondering if Keiko might be able to hear her. Though she was sure that some tiny corner of her must know what the word meant, that she must truly feel it somewhere inside her if she was saying it so many times, though she knew that it must mean something to her, she still couldn’t make any sense of it. To her ears, it only sounded like white noise. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

The viewscreen ignored her, and if Keiko was out there listening, so did she.

Dax wanted to slide out of that horribly uncomfortable chair, to slide down to the floor again, to hug her knees to her chest and rock back and forth in rhythm with the ship’s motion. She wanted to bounce along in time with the turbulence, to shudder in sync with the misaligned inertial dampers, to become broken and off-centre like they were. She wanted to become nothing. She wanted to shut her eyes, to be surrounded by nothing all around her as well as inside, to see nothing just like she felt and thought and was nothing. She wanted to block out all the chaos and confusion, the emotions that she knew she should be feeling but which hovered just out of reach, maddening but never quite enough to make her truly mad. She wanted to be blind and deaf, to rip off her skin until she couldn’t touch anything, to close up her nose and her mouth so she couldn’t smell or taste, to turn off all her senses until there was nothing left to deceive her into thinking she was real. She wanted to turn herself inward until the only thing that remained was that heart-shaped hole inside her chest.

That hole. Her heart. It was racing. The very idea was ridiculous, really, because she couldn’t think and she couldn’t feel, so what reason did her stupid empty heart have for beating so fast? She was utterly incapable of processing anything, and yet her whole body felt as though it were on edge, every muscle tightened to the point of pain, like she was bracing for a blow that never came. She wasn’t afraid, of course, because that would involve feeling something, but there was a strange kind of anticipation kicking impossibly inside her chest, an expectant sense of dull dread, as though something awful was coming and all she could do was bend forwards and protect her soft places in the futile hope that that would be enough.

She stood up. It was stupid, she knew, because she was supposed to keep an eye on the helm, to make sure that the ship was still heading in the right direction, that she wasn’t about to crash and burn, that she wasn’t going to die here. It was important work, pilot’s work, and a frustrated young man’s voice grumbled eerily inside her head, telling her to be a good pilot, to fly the damn ship… but she wasn’t a good pilot, she was a silly little girl, and she couldn’t sit still for another second.

Her body was screaming at her to move, every muscle twitching and trembling, and though a part of her realised that the need to move sort of counted as a feeling of some description, it was more than she could do to try and process that. She was helpless, dissociated, like her body’s behaviour was completely independent of the chaos rattling hollowly inside her head. She felt almost like she was two people — not like a host and a symbiont, but two fundamentally unconnected creatures, a mind that was on the brink of shutting down completely and a body so hyper-aware of itself that it was almost painful.

Her legs forced her to pace the length of the cockpit, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, repetitive and endless, until she was weak-kneed and dizzy, until the cockpit tilted and swerved around her and she thought she might be sick, until she felt like she was drunk. She paused for a few seconds, just long enough to catch her breath, then turned and started the cycle again. Better to feel drunk and dizzy, she decided between steps, than to feel hollow and lost. Better to feel sick than to feel empty. Better to feel unpleasant than to feel nothing at all.

“This is ridiculous,” she mumbled (back and forth and back and forth and back and forth). “This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. It’s _ridiculous_.”

And it was. It was ridiculous that she felt like this, that emptiness could be so frightening. How could she be so frightened when she was so empty? How could she be so empty when she was so frightened? It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous, too, how desperately she wanted to be overwhelmed by Joran again, wishing for his hatred and his fury, for all the things she’d fought so long, all the things that made him so terrible, all the things that made her terrible too. It was ridiculous to think that it was better to feel terrible things than to feel nothing. Shouldn’t she be grateful for this? Shouldn’t she be glad that she wasn’t feeling anything? Shouldn’t it be a relief after so much pain? Wasn’t this what she’d wanted all along?

She was still shaking when she dropped back down into the uncomfortable pilot’s seat; the back-and-forth pacing had done little to still the tremors or take the edge off her body’s restlessness, but it had worn her out a little and given her a brief respite from the pulsing stars on the viewscreen, and she supposed that was all she could realistically ask for. Her hands were a little steadier, at least, when she brought them up to trip and stumble over the unfamiliar console, checking and scanning and doing anything she could think of to keep herself busy. Course held, speed holding, everything within normal parameters. Well, everything except the pilot.

The task was arduous, exhausting in its redundancy, but it gave her something to focus on and something to think about, and that in itself felt almost like a miracle in the fog-like mess of her brain. She could focus on the navigational sensors, the flight trajectory, the speed and the course. She could work the helm controls, key in basic commands, even make some vague sense out of the readouts. And, at long last, it seemed that she could think again, so long as she only thought about things that didn’t matter.

The rest of the journey seemed to take forever, and it was excruciating. Dax split the time as best she could, huddling in the uncomfortable pilot’s seat for what felt like hours and then wrenching back to her feet and pacing back and forth for what felt like days. She fell into a kind of rhythm, carving out patterns in the passage of time as best she could. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, lifetimes come and gone, all punctuated by the sound of her own voice, mad and mumbling, repeating the same nonsense phrases over and over again, pointless little observations that nobody would ever hear.

It had been a very long time since Dax had actually needed to physically land a ship on a planet, and it was certainly nothing she’d ever had to do in Jadzia’s lifetime. Normally, she would be glad of the challenge, happy for the opportunity to put Torias’s old skills to the test, to open herself up to Tobin’s wisdom and precision, but just then she could barely keep her eyes focused, could barely keep the most rudimentary and pointless thoughts in her head, could barely do anything at all. How was she supposed to land this piece of space junk and keep it in one piece when she couldn’t even do the same to herself?

Jadzia, of course, was furiously protective of her little ship, and Dax knew that it wouldn’t make the least bit of difference how much hell she’d been through for her on Terok Nor, how shell-shocked or traumatised she was: if she got so much as a scratch on its rusty little hull, by the time Jadzia was done with her, she would find herself wishing for the Intendant’s tender mercies. She wondered idly if that was Torias making his presence known out here, if Jadzia leaned on his influence in the same way that Dax leaned on Curzon’s. Certainly, she seemed to share his taste in women; it wouldn’t be too huge a stretch to assume she shared his passion for flying too.

Dax thought back to the fond look on Jadzia’s face as she’d taught her the controls, speaking about the ship like a mother about her child, and how Sisko had rolled his eyes with affectionate annoyance. She almost smiled, lips twitching in the half-second before she remembered that she’d forgotten how. She was a little over-protective too when it came to things that were her own, and she supposed she could understand her counterpart’s dedication to the little vessel, beat-up and worthless as it was. It didn’t need to be the sleekest or the prettiest ship in the galaxy, the fastest or the most expensive; sentimentality sanded down even the roughest of edges, and this ship had clearly taken Jadzia to hell and back again. Dax made a mental note to ask her about it, if only to distract herself.

The landing was rough and unpleasant, but still better than she would have expected given that she could barely even see the controls, much less understand them. Maybe Torias was looking out for her after all, because the ship stayed in one piece even as her teeth rattled in her head from the force of it. It felt like a victory, if only a minor one, and that gave her strength.

She’d made a point of setting the ship down some distance from the rebels’ cave, as much for her own benefit as for the sake of security, hoping that the walk back to the camp would do her some good. At the very least, she needed some fresh air after so long cooped up in that damned cockpit, reeling and dazed as she was. Still, her legs felt shaky and her stomach felt weak after the landing, and so she took a moment to steady herself before setting out.

It was only when she crossed to the rear of the ship to collect her cargo that she realised she hadn’t thought to check it back on Terok Nor. If the Intendant had cheated her, there was nothing she could do about it now, and she hissed a violent curse under her breath, furious at her lack of foresight. It didn’t matter that she had been in no condition to check anything at the time, or that she wouldn’t have even been able to make it to the ship at all if not for Garak and his less-than-gentle guidance. It didn’t matter that she had been through hell, that she’d been in shock, that she hadn’t even been able to stand, much less think clearly; all she could think of just then was the sudden sickening certainty that because of her own damned stupidity she’d come out of there with nothing.

She had never been more relieved to be wrong.

Apparently, the Intendant hadn’t been lying when she’d promised to supply the goods Dax wanted so long as they were paid for in full. It spoke volumes about her current state, she supposed, that she didn’t even have the strength of mind to be surprised. The container was small, but full, and a short scan with the rudimentary ship’s sensors confirmed their contents to be the benzocyatizine that Jadzia needed, and Dax’s head spun as she tried to reconcile what she was seeing with what she knew of the Intendant.

For a moment, her mind ventured so close to feeling something that she actually felt a little queasy, confusion and chaos rising up thick and saccharine in her throat. She dropped her head between her knees, arms bracing on the container as she closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe. It took a couple of seconds to push the feeling aside, and when it passed, she steadied herself by counting the medicine vials in the case. One, two, ten, twenty. Considerably more than she had anticipated, and hopefully more than Jadzia would need. Good, she thought, taking a final breath, and let the container fall closed.

She made sure that the ship was well-hidden, rocks and cliffs offering a more than adequate shelter, and stumbled a faltering path back towards the rebel cave. It was the closest thing to a home she had in this universe, she supposed, and shivered in spite of the warmth. The idea should have cut her far deeper than it did; it should have made her stop and fall to her knees, should have made her feel sick again, but it didn’t. She just felt a little bit more lost than she already was. It reminded her once again that her mind was numb and useless, that there was something very wrong with her insides. She bit down lightly on her lip, not feeling even the least compulsion to draw blood, and allowed herself a moment of grief for the hollow place inside her. She wished she could remember how to hurt.

For all her optimistic expectations, the air didn’t do her very much good at all. It wasn’t fresh and it certainly wasn’t clean; it was thick and heavy, clogged with dust and dirt, and far too warm for a Trill to ever be comfortable. She supposed it was a mark of how far gone she was that she hadn’t expected that from a planet in the middle of the Badlands; she knew where she was, and she knew what life was like out here, but still somehow she’d expected the crisp cool air of the Tenaran Ice Cliffs. Naturally, then, by the time she staggered into the cave complex that kept the rebels so well hidden from their Alliance persecutors, she was coughing and spluttering almost loudly enough to wake the dead.

Once she was safely inside, she braced herself against the slippery rock wall, blinking through streaming eyes, but she barely had time to recall how to breathe unobstructed, much less actually choke down a lungful of non-toxic air, before a strong pair of hands grabbed her by the shoulders and unceremoniously dragged her further into the cave complex.

“Are you trying to bring the Alliance down on our doorstep?”

It was Julian Bashir. Even in this universe, Dax recognised that familiar clipped accent, the unspoken sense of superiority. She was sure that the Julian she knew would never take that tone with her, however, and the bitterness and resentment of this one’s voice grated unnaturally in his throat. Her Julian spoke softly, always keeping his medical training close, even when he was off-duty. Whether speaking to her as a friend or as a patient, he always used the same voice, low but rich with feeling. He wore his heart close to his sleeve, that was true, but it was such a sweet heart that Dax couldn’t bring herself to mind.

This universe’s Bashir seemed the same, only his heart was as black as everything else in the Badlands, and when he spoke to her it was as though she alone had caused every iota of suffering he had ever endured in his life, resentment and bitterness laced by something that was still too young to quite be malice. In a few years, she thought, he could be dangerous.

“Not on purpose,” she said, answering his demand as unobjectionably as she could.

“Oh, then you’re just an idiot by accident?” he snapped. “That makes me feel so much better.”

He tightened his grip on her arms and hauled her further along. Dax didn’t resist, letting him do what he wanted to her. She didn’t even have enough strength left to fight herself, after all. What chance did she have against him? Besides, at least he was on the same side as Jadzia, which was more than she could say for anyone on Terok Nor; if things turned ugly with him, she could at least be guaranteed one person in this dark and dismal place would come running to her rescue. Assuming Jadzia was still alive, anyway.

The thought sobered her, and she would have stumbled if Bashir wasn’t holding her so tightly.

“Come on,” he snapped, without ceremony. “The captain and his little hussy have been waiting for you for days, and they’re not exactly patient people at the best of times. I swear to God, if I have to listen to either one of them whining about you one more bloody time…”

“Hussy?” Dax echoed, unsure whether to be offended on Jadzia’s behalf or amused on her own.

Bashir cleared his throat, as though embarrassed. “Never mind that,” he shot back sharply, like Dax was the one who’d raised the insult in the first place. “Are you coming or not? Because I swear, little girl, if you’ve double-crossed us…”

Dax felt a flush of something that might have been anger. “Don’t call me ‘little girl’,” she said, but her voice just sounded weak and weary, not threatening at all.

Bashir stopped to stare at her, pulling her in so close that she could almost taste the sweat on his upper lip. “I’ll call you what I bloody well like. Now you listen to me. The captain might trust you, but frankly he’s a bit of an idiot, and when that bitch of his is concerned, he’s blind and gullible to boot. I’ll be the first to say he could do with a swift kick up that arrogant arse of his, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand back and let an interloper like you be the one to do it. If anyone’s going to take him out, it’s going to be me, not some nobody from another universe.”

“That’s good to know,” Dax said tiredly.

Bashir gnashed his teeth, shaking her. “This isn’t a game, _little girl_. Make no mistake: if you cross Sisko, you cross me.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

In spite of herself, Dax realised that she was trying not to smile. Watching the man she recognised as Julian Bashir trying to intimidate anyone was like watching a toothless puppy play with a chew-toy. Adorable, but ultimately ineffectual.

The thought struck a chord somewhere in the part of her that could almost grasp the idea of sentiment, and all of a suddenly she found herself drowning in something like nostalgia, close to feeling, but not quite close enough to truly connect. It felt like home, but a home long since abandoned, an empty house that had once echoed with laughter.

She remembered the world she came from, the people and the planets and all the things that she knew; she knew that she loved them, and that she wanted to go back, but all she could really process as she tried to embrace that vague ghost of feeling was a hazy and disjointed awareness that she didn’t want to be here. What sweetness might have come from the memory turned to smoke before she could clutch at it, leaving her hands empty and her head even more hollow than it was before.

Seeming to sense her discomfiture, Bashir’s expression softened just a touch. For a heartbeat or two, he looked so much like the Julian Dax knew so well, like a doctor seeing the pain in a patient and feeling compelled to reach out and offer comfort.

“What the hell happened to you over there?” he asked, as abrasive as ever but without his usual accusation.

Dax thought of Keiko again, of the Intendant, of Garak, of the fractured pieces of herself she’d left behind on Terok Nor. She thought of guilt and shame, of blood on her hands, and wished that she could cry.

“Nothing,” she said instead, the word rasping against her throat. “Let’s go.”

Bashir shrugged, but didn’t press her. She supposed he didn’t see much point in it. Though he had shown the faintest wisp of Julian’s compassion, he had had none of his bedside manner, none of the empathy that made him such a good doctor. She supposed there was something of this man’s in-your-face abrasiveness that shone through in Julian too, at least in the way he came on too strong, the way he pushed for things that were better left alone, and the way he tried to corner people he was trying to talk to. None of that was deliberate, not like they were in this Bashir, but there was a haunting kind of resonance there, a thin thread of similarity taken to two very different extremes. She wondered what it might say about Julian Bashir, about either or both of them, but she was too worn out to try and think.

The central cavern was just as rudimentary as she remembered it, rebels scattered all across the meagre space in little groups, talking amongst themselves in hushed voices. The ambience was strange here, communal but untrusting, and it felt especially odd after so long on Terok Nor; the people here seemed edgy, yes, and a little afraid, but there wasn’t the same aura of despair that had so pervaded the station, seeping in through the bulkheads and spreading like a sickness. Though it was obvious these people were living hand to mouth, on the edge of squalor, suffering greatly for what they believed in, there was no real fear for their lives. For the time being, at least, they were safe. They might not be free, yet, but at least they were safe. It made all the difference.

Jadzia wasn’t among the rebels there; Dax couldn’t see her anywhere, but before she had the chance to ask after her, Sisko caught her eye from across the room. He’d seen her almost before they had even fully entered the room, it seemed, and was by their side in a few long strides, shoving poor Bashir out of the way without the least bit of respect. He didn’t waste time introducing himself or shouting a greeting, simply grabbed Dax by the shoulders and shook her so hard that she felt her bones rattle.

“You’re back!” he cried, as if that alone was more of a victory than he’d expected. “I take it your mission was a complete success?” He released her for a fraction of a second, eyeing the container in her hands for just long enough to deduce what it was, then clapped his hands with juvenile glee and shook her again. “I knew it! She’ll be so happy!”

“I hope so,” Dax said quietly, extricating himself from his grip and rubbing her arms. Like the rest of her, they were unbearably sore. “I had to go to hell and back to get that stuff. And to tell you the truth, we don’t even know for sure whether it’ll do her any good at all.”

She didn’t elaborate on her doubts, though they were still very much alive in her. She didn’t tell Sisko that being doped up on benzocyatizine hadn’t done a damn thing for her, that her condition had continued to deteriorate even after her isoboramine levels had stabilised, that she’d gotten worse and worse until she’d finally gone into neural shock. She definitely didn’t tell him that it was only by bringing out Joran’s memories in the symbiont pools that she had survived at all. She really had been to hell and back, and she didn’t have the energy for that conversation right now.

Besides, if she was honest, there was still a part of her that hoped things would turn out differently here, that Jadzia would prove stronger than she had, that the benzocyatic treatments would be just fine for her, safe without any of the mnemonic triggers that had so brutalised Dax’s own mind, that she would been okay just as long as she didn’t see or hear or learn anything new. If they could just stabilise her isoboramine levels, she told herself, and keep her safely hidden away for the rest of her life, carefully protected from anything that might trigger a reaction…

She shook her head, aware even in her hazy state of how ridiculous that sounded.

 _One thing at a time,_ she thought, and swayed on her feet, trying not to look too worried as she met Sisko’s hopeful gaze.

“It’s better than nothing,” he told her soberly. It was typical of him, she thought, the way he refused to acknowledge even the faintest possibility of something he didn’t want to think about; in that, at least, he was all too similar to Dax’s own Benjamin.

“I hope so,” she said, less than certain.

“Come on,” he pressed. “We don’t want to keep her waiting.” He lingered a moment, gracing her with a savage smile. “You know, she’s been pining like you wouldn’t believe. I always said she was a narcissist, but I never thought she’d get the chance to take it literally. All she talks about is how much she misses you, how goddamn brave you are, how wonderful it is that you’re doing this for her…” He huffed, a little bitter. “I’m the one who got you over here, you know…”

“I know,” Dax sighed. “I haven’t forgotten.”

He studied her for a moment. “No, I suppose you haven’t.” He didn’t mention Terok Nor, forcing the smile back to his lips. “Anyway. Now that you’re back, I guess I’ll be out of a job. She’ll want you in our bed next, just you wait and see.”

He smiled, roguishly charming, but Dax was in no mood to play games this time. The Intendant had sucked all the easy flirtation out of her, and even thinking of going to bed with someone else — even Jadzia — just made her feel ill and woozy.

“Where is she?” she asked.

Sisko rolled his eyes. “Where do you think?” he grunted.

Dax knew the answer to that, but she didn’t say anything. She just let him grab her by the arm again, a little more roughly this time, and lead her towards the tiny little bedroom. In a strange half-numb sort of way, she found that she was almost looking forward to seeing Jadzia again; after so long on Terok Nor, surrounded by friendly faces doing evil things, it felt almost like a relief to be going back to Jadzia, the one face she knew that she could trust. She would look into her eyes, her own ice-blue eyes, and see the same strain turning the youth to age behind them, her own struggles made manifest in someone else. Her heart was racing again, but this time it didn’t feel quite so bad.

She knew better than to think for a moment that Jadzia would understand everything that had happened on Terok Nor. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe that she herself would have been able to if their positions had been reversed, and whatever Jadzia knew of the Intendant she couldn’t possibly grasp the depth of what Dax had been through, of what she’d _done_. Still, perhaps foolishly optimistic, a part of her couldn’t help thinking that, if anyone in this twisted universe might relate at least on a rudimentary level, who better than the woman who shared her existence?

Besides, if nothing else, she supposed they still needed to have a long talk about the whole ‘exile’ thing.

It was by pure reflex that she found herself reaching out to hold Sisko back when he moved to sweep aside the curtain partition. She recalled all too clearly how their first meeting had started, how Jadzia had slapped him for not having the decency to knock. Though she doubted the feint at manners would make a difference if Jadzia really had her heart set on assaulting him again, she supposed there was no harm in at least making the effort, and she rapped her knuckles futilely against the stone wall. The sound was lost to the rock, but at least she’d tried, announcing their presence as well as she could without the benefit of an actual door.

“Better safe than sorry…” she said to Sisko in a quiet aside, and he touched the side of his face in silent agreement.

Jadzia seemed to appreciate the token gesture of respect, at least to the point that she didn’t try to slap either of them this time. Like Sisko’s, her face lit up when she saw Dax standing there, blue eyes glowing even brighter as they widened to take in the sight of her. She practically leaped off the bed, launching herself across the room without sparing so much as a glance for her would-be lover, and pulled Dax into a rib-crushing hug.

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,” Sisko remarked.

Jadzia still didn’t bother to look at him. “No thanks to you,” she shot back, then promptly went back to squeezing the life out of Dax. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

Dax extricated herself with a grimace, rubbing her sore ribs. “Where else would I go?” she asked. “You people are the only ones who can get me back to my…”

She trailed off, feeling uncomfortable. _‘Universe’_ sounded so informal, so vague, but _‘home’_ felt strange and unnatural, and the word wouldn’t shape itself on her tongue. For a moment, she felt trapped, caught between science and sentiment, and couldn’t quite tether herself to either. They were both true, she knew, both a part of her, but neither of them felt right. Nothing felt right at all, and she scrabbled clumsily for a passable substitute.

“…back where I came from,” she finished at last, weakly.

Jadzia’s expression darkened to a frown. “That’s the only reason you came back?” she asked, in a voice tinged with something like rejection.

Dax closed her eyes, tried to cut through the maelstrom of nothing in her head. “No… yes…” She tried to breathe, but the cave air was stifling; it stung in her eyes, pricking them with moisture; all of a sudden her jaw ached, but she didn’t know why. “I don’t know… I… I don’t know…”

Jadzia’s frown deepened, the disappointment compounded by rising concern. “Are you all right?”

The air grew even thicker, heavy and oppressive, until she couldn’t breathe at all. Dax was struck by a sudden and unexpected vision of the Ore Processing Centre, of bodies pressed together, the cloying smell of blood and sweat and tears, unbearable heat and the whip-sharp crack of voices. She was hot, too hot, and incredibly dizzy, and when she brought her trembling fingertips up to press against her forehead, they came away drenched with sweat.

“Jadzia?”

She flinched at the sound of her name, sure that it was Kira’s voice she heard, even as it spilled from lips that looked like her own. _I’m not Jadzia,_ she thought. _She is. You are. Someone else is Jadzia. I don’t know what I am any more._

But that didn’t stop that damned distorted voice from saying it again. “Jadzia…”

Reeling, she took a step back, and then another, retreating by pure primal instinct until her back hit the cold stone of the wall, until she found herself spread flat against the very surface she’d beaten herself bloody against the last time she was here. It wasn’t fear driving her backwards, she knew, but something else, something deeper, something she couldn’t begin to fathom. She knew she wasn’t afraid because she still wasn’t capable of feeling anything, but she was hot and dizzy and she couldn’t bear the sound of that damned name. Not _Jadzia_. That wasn’t her.

Her jaw ached. It ached so much. Her eyes still stung with salt, sweat and tears and blood, the ringing cries of slavery and abuse. She was so dizzy, so hot, so lost…

“Jadzia?” The other one was staring at her. The one who deserved that name. The one who wasn’t her.

“That’s you,” Dax heard herself say, discordant and remote. “It’s you. It’s not me. I’m not… I…”

“Okay.” She frowned, obviously very concerned, but did not say the name again. “Are you all right?”

Dax’s head spun. It was such a simple question, the simplest question in any universe, but she could not comprehend it. She couldn’t make sense of what was being asked, couldn’t cut through the clamour to find an answer, couldn’t understand anything but the cold rock against her back and the hot sweat soaking her skin. Her jaw ached and her eyes stung, but was she all right? She had no idea.

“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t know anything.”


	22. Chapter 22

“Do you need to sit down?”

Though it was pitched as a question, Dax knew that it wasn’t really intended as one. It was probably for the best, she supposed numbly, because she didn’t have an answer anyway. She didn’t know what she needed; she didn’t really know anything beyond the fact that she was too hot and the stone digging into her back was very cold. That much, she knew, but that wasn’t what she was being asked, and she was almost grateful when Jadzia took the decision out of her hands, guiding her with strong hands and steady steps across to the bed.

Dax let herself go slack, let Jadzia guide her and position her as she wanted without protestation. Her limbs were impossibly heavy, her movements sluggish and disoriented, and she couldn’t control them. Her head wasn’t any better, confused and chaotic, filled with nonsense sounds and high-pitched whining; she felt like her mind had shut down entirely, like her body was not hers any more, like she was completely outside her own control. If she was capable of fear, she would have been terrified, but she was just numb and empty, as cold inside as the stone surrounding them.

Jadzia lowered her down onto the bed, seating her carefully and arranging her rebellious limbs for her, then sat herself down gently by her side. Her movements were graceful, elegant, everything that Dax was not, but it was more than she could do to feel bitter about it. Once, she supposed, she might have been elegant too. But that was before Terok Nor, before she learned that there were more important things than being graceful. The Intendant was graceful, lithe and fluid as a cat, but all the grace in the galaxy hadn’t been enough to salvage her soul.

Familiar hands touched her face, cool against the sweat on her brow. Cool hands, Trill hands, Jadzia’s hands. They helped to calm her.

“Can I get you anything?”

Dax took a deep breath. The hot air cut into her lungs, but she didn’t complain. “No.” Her voice was raw, husky, like she’d been crying, but her face was perfectly dry and her eyes were too sore to make tears. “Thank you, but no. I’m… I think I’m all right.”

“You don’t look all right,” Sisko commented from his corner. “You look like hell.” He shook his head, somewhat more amused than concerned. “You’re not really very durable on that side, are you? Five minutes on Terok Nor, and you come crawling back here looking like you were stuck there your whole goddamn life. You’re—”

“Shut up,” Jadzia barked, raising a hand; Dax suspected the only reason she didn’t slap him was because she didn’t want to leave her side. “If you don’t have anything useful to say, get out of here and leave us alone.”

Characteristically displeased about being told what to do but not wanting to push his luck, Sisko grudgingly obeyed. He muttered a few choice curses about Daxes and their tempers as he stormed out past the curtain, though, and Dax tried to ground herself in the receding sound of his voice.

When it had faded out entirely, she turned back to Jadzia, mouth half-open to form a ‘thank you’, to tell her that she was grateful for the privacy, but the words wouldn’t come. Her throat was closed, and her jaw was aching so badly that she could hardly move it at all.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” Jadzia pressed. “Some water, maybe? I can’t promise it’ll be clean, but it’s better than nothing. You really don’t look good.”

Dax shook her head again. “I’m all right.” Maybe if she said it enough times, one of them might believe it. “I’m just a little shaken, that’s all. That place was… I…”

Jadzia nodded her empathy, letting one palm lie flat against Dax’s back, thumb tracing small circles. “She’s quite a piece of work, isn’t she?”

For a long moment, Dax stared at her, not understanding. All she could think of was Keiko. “A piece of work?” she echoed, trying not to remember the stench of blood and sweat and tears and death. “Who is?”

“The Intendant, of course.” Jadzia sounded very worried now. “Who else?”

Dax’s body twitched, but she didn’t feel anything. “Oh.”

Jadzia was frowning now, not even bothering to hide the concern. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She took a breath, swallowing, and Dax watched the slight spasm in her throat. Dimly she remembered a slimmer one, her own fingers wrapped around it, raising bruises, cutting off breath, pain and pleasure and pleasure and pain and _oh, now I remember…_

“I’m all right,” she answered dutifully, but she wasn’t.

“Did she hurt you?” Jadzia pressed, and the hesitation in her voice said she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. “Touch you? Do anything to you?”

“No,” Dax said. Then, again, this time as an afterthought, “I don’t know.”

A hint of that patented Dax temper shone through on Jadzia’s face, lit up by a spark of impatience. “Well?” she asked, voice sharp. “Did she or didn’t she?”

Dax forced herself to think, to speak slowly and carefully. “No. She didn’t do anything I didn’t let… offer… ask…” She trailed off for a moment, unable to quite figure out which of those words was the most accurate, if any, then gave up and tried to explain it another way. “Everything she did, we did.”

Jadzia watched her very closely, reading her face for dishonesty. “You’re sure?”

“Mhm.” She tried to nod, but her head was too heavy. “She was… to me… she… she was… we were…” Her hands started to shake again, so she clasped them in her lap. How could she explain that none of this was really about the Intendant at all, that it was about Dax, that an innocent woman was dead because of her? “She… she… she didn’t…”

“Slowly,” Jadzia urged softly, hanging on her every word.

Dax steadied herself. “She put me in a holding cell for a while.”

She blurted out the words without thinking, and it was only when Jadzia’s eyes went even wider that she realised it was probably a stupid thing to say. At the time, she’d hoped to keep her incarceration to herself, but suddenly it was all she could remember about her time in that place, the only thing she could make any sense of. Whatever she’d done with the Intendant, whatever the Intendant had done with her, it had all faded into oblivion and shock, dissolving until she couldn’t remember any of it except that last time, that last terrible time, and how could she tell Jadzia about that? How could she tell her about _Nerys_ , about her Kira, about how she’d stayed too long and paid for her selfishness with Keiko’s life?

She couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. And all she had left was the stupid holding cell, so that was all Jadzia would get. Let her do with that what she wanted. Let her judge her, worry about her, be angry with her. Let her slap Dax instead of Sisko if that was what she wanted. They’d both endured far worse.

“Why?” Jadzia was asking. “Did you do something? Did you destroy my reputation? I swear, if you—”

“Your reputation,” Dax repeated hollowly. If she could remember how to, she would have laughed. “No, I didn’t hurt your reputation. It wasn’t about you at all. None of it was about you. Nothing was about you.”

“You were me!” Jadzia reminded her. “Of course it was about me! What—”

“No,” Dax said again, surprising herself with the clarity of her voice. “She knew who I was. I mean, she figured out I was…” She shook her head. “She knew I wasn’t you. So you don’t have to worry about your reputation. Okay?”

Jadzia scrubbed a hand across her face, visibly frustrated. “Okay,” she sighed, then seemed to recover herself, possibly remembering that all of this was for her benefit in the first place. “She still gave you what you wanted, and let you leave in one piece? Even after she knew who you were?” She whistled, apparently impressed. “She must have really taken a shine to you. I’d say _‘good work’_ , but I already know what kind of work it takes to win her affection…”

Her eyes got dark then, even icier than usual, and Dax wondered for the first time if perhaps this Jadzia hadn’t been quite so willing to fall into the Intendant’s bed as she herself had been. She remembered her words, and the casual subtlety behind them as she’d tried to convince Dax to go to Terok Nor. _‘I used to do good work for the Intendant’_ , she’d said, and for the first time Dax found herself wondering if perhaps she’d missed a note of bitterness in those words, a painful kind of irony that she hadn’t wanted to hear back then.

Was that why the Intendant had enjoyed her so much? Because for once she’d had a Dax who was willing, even eager, to return her advances, to give instead of just being taken? She took Jadzia’s face in her hands, stared deep into her eyes, seeing her own face reflected in those ice-blue pools.

“What was it like for you?” she heard herself asking.

Jadzia looked distant, haunted and broken. Dax wondered if she was thinking of the Intendant, or perhaps of Nilani Kahn. “It was what it was,” she said simply, and Dax felt her jaw clench under her hands. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? We’re talking about what she did with you, not me. Remember?”

Dax did remember, but she didn’t want to. She bit down on her lip, but the blood tasted bitter and unpleasant. “You told me I’d have to get my hands dirty,” she said, very quietly. “I knew what I had to do.”

Still, though, she closed her eyes, remembering all too vividly that fateful last time. _“Nerys”_ , she’d said, and condemned Keiko to death. She’d known what she was expected to do when she left here, that was true, but that final time wasn’t part of that. She could have turned around and left, could have run back to the ship and flown away, could have disappeared and never looked back. She could have resisted that one last time, but she hadn’t. And it wasn’t because of anything she had to do, or was expected to do; it was because she had closed her eyes and for one stupid second allowed herself to see Nerys.

Keiko was dead, not for anything Dax had needed to do, but for the one thing she’d wanted to do.

“So what’s the problem, then?” Jadzia asked. It was issued like a demand, but Dax could tell that was only because this Jadzia was more used to giving orders than asking questions. “If she didn’t… I mean… if you were…” She took a moment, possibly driving away her own memories, possibly just trying to make sense of what Dax had said. “If she was at least civil — and we both know that’s the best anyone can expect from her — then why do you look so awful? Why do you look like you’ve been to hell and back?”

“Because I have,” Dax replied, suddenly feeling more exhausted than she had in eight lifetimes. “That place is hell. You knew that when you sent me there.”

Jadzia turned her face away again, embarrassed. She kept her hands where they were, though, one pressed against Dax’s damp forehead and the other massaging tight circles at her back. “I did,” she confessed after a long beat. “It is hell, and I did know that, and I sent you there anyway, and I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I sent you there. I’m sorry I couldn’t go myself. I’m sorry.”

She’d been sitting on that apology for a long time, Dax could tell, but now that it was out there, it rang as hollow as the space inside her. “Don’t be,” she said. “Don’t be sorry.”

“I know,” Jadzia said. “I know it won’t help. I know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The truth of it echoed in her head, fundamental and inexhaustible. “It’s done now. It’s done, and it’s over. It’s done. I’m out of there now. It’s done. It’s…”

She trailed off, reality striking her like lightning between the eyes, more forceful than any blow she’d ever felt. It really was done. It really was over. She really was out of there. That was all true. She was out, it was over, it was done. It was done. It was _done_. She was free, and she was safe, and she never had to go back to that place again. The terrible things she’d seen, the terrible things she’d done, the terrible things that had happened… it was over. It was done. She was out of there.

But then, so was Keiko, wasn’t she? She was out of there, too, but at what cost? She was out, but not like Dax. She wasn’t free. She wasn’t safe. She was just done.

The sob exploded out of her before she even knew it was there, loud and violent and utterly unstoppable. It was followed by another, and then another, until it was all she was capable of, all she could do. She howled, all the tension in her jaw releasing as she buried her face in Jadzia’s shoulder, her own shoulder, every atom in her body going whipcord-tight as she poured out every ounce of hurt she hadn’t been able to find, all that emotion she hadn’t let herself feel, everything inside her that she’d lost, sobbing and screaming and choking out the last eight hours’ worth of repressed and forgotten feeling in a tidal surge of raw explosive pain.

Jadzia took her into her arms, pulling her in and holding her tight, rocking with her. Seven lifetimes of half-remembered hearts poured out between them, children and parents and siblings, friends and spouses and losses, seven lifetimes of _love_ all coming out at once, passionate and nurturing as she held her close and safe.

“It’s over now,” she whispered, lips cool against Dax’s ear. “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over…”

The moment passed as quickly and as suddenly as it had come on. Dax choked on a final shuddering sob, hiccupped, and then it was done. No more. Nothing else. She wasn’t numb like she had been before, at least not exactly, but she wasn’t quite able to really harness her feelings yet either. She felt like she was trapped, caught between what she had been and what she was supposed to be, like she was halfway towards something but she didn’t know whether it was dangerous, or even what it was. Her breath hitched in her throat as it tried to catch its rhythm again, and she felt the last of her tears soaking through Jadzia’s shirt.

As soon as she had the strength, she pulled out of Jadzia’s arms. She felt awkward and self-conscious, and she stared down at her knees, trying not to think too hard of the fool she’d just made of herself, slowly piecing together the mess inside her head. She was embarrassed, yes, but not mortified, and she supposed she should be grateful for that at least; in anyone else’s company, she would have been humiliated, but the woman pushing the hair back off her face was herself. Jadzia was Dax, and that made the shame a little less.

It didn’t matter just then that they were two completely different people, that there was a whole universe’s worth of differences carving out fresh perspectives behind the eyes she saw in the mirror every morning. It didn’t matter that they weren’t exactly the same. They were close enough. Right here and right now, they were the same soul. The woman who sat beside her was Jadzia Dax, just like she was, and that was enough.

“Feeling better?” Jadzia asked. She spoke softly, the question tender and sympathetic, a far cry from the way she’d asked it when Dax had lost control of her temper the last time she was here.

Dax swallowed, tasting salt. “I think so,” she said, mustering what she hoped was a self-deprecating smile. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t know what came over me.”

Jadzia shrugged, as though mirror images of herself from parallel universes collapsed sobbing into her arms all the time. “It’s probably just shock,” she said, thumbing away the tracks of Dax’s tears, dismissing the shame and the breakdown at the same time. “Like you said, that place is hell, and you’ve been through—”

“I know.” Dax interrupted, unable to hear it. “But I’m still sorry. I should… I should know better. I should _be_ better. I’m a trained Starfleet officer, and a joined Trill, and I’m…”

“You’re in a difficult situation,” Jadzia finished for her, more diplomatically than Dax probably deserved. “I am you, remember? And I’ve been there too. I know what it’s like, what she’s like. I know. You don’t need to explain.”

“I feel like I do.” Dax closed her eyes. Her head pounded from all the crying, but at least her jaw didn’t ache any more, and she no longer had to blink back the sting in her eyes just to see. “I feel like I need to explain everything.”

Jadzia looked at her, curiosity mingling with ambivalence, and just a touch of fear. She didn’t want to know, Dax realised. She was still locked in her own thoughts of Terok Nor, her own memories of the Intendant, so sure that Dax’s traumas lay with her. And maybe they did, at least in part, but not in the way Jadzia thought, and Dax felt inexplicably compelled to reassure her.

Jadzia shrugged, but her voice was shaky when she spoke. “You can if you think it’ll help,” she said. “You can do anything you like. You’re out of there.”

Dax wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to comfort, but she supposed it didn’t matter; it didn’t seem to have much effect on either of them. 

“Not now,” she said, and not just because she didn’t think she could take any more forced empathy. She closed her eyes, feeling suddenly exhausted. “I don’t want to think about it any more. I don’t want to think about anything. I just…” She sighed. “I’m just so tired…”

“I know.” Her fingertips were light against Dax’s brow, tender and sweet. “You should get some rest.”

Dax leaned into the contact, the cool familiarity, leaned into Jadzia. She felt safe like this, like maybe she really was safe and free after all.

“I’d like that,” she said, and realised with a jolt that it was true.

For the most part, anyway. There was still a frightened little corner of her that dreaded the very idea of rest, of sleep, of succumbing to her subconscious. She still shivered at the thought of dreaming, of giving in to the violence that she couldn’t fight until she was away. It was a very tiny part, though, overshadowed entirely by exhaustion and hollow numbness. So what if she dreamed of bloodlust and frenzy? So what if she drank blood and ate hearts and relished death? At least she would feel something. At least she would remember how feeling felt. If she woke up angry and hateful, stomach sour and mouth thick with the taste of blood, at least she would remember what it was to relish it.

She didn’t want to feel like Joran. She didn’t want to thrive on violence and slaughter and hate, to live only for terrible things, to have her pulse quicken only at the thought of pain. She just wanted to remember how it felt to have her pulse quicken at all. She didn’t want to be like him, or the Intendant, or even Garak. She didn’t want to become any of them, but right now she wasn’t really herself either. Becoming like Joran, even in a dream, had to be better than being numb. Right now, the thought of losing herself to his passion was laughable; how could she lose herself to violent feelings when she couldn’t even summon tame ones? No. She wouldn’t become like him. Not now. The best she could hope for that he would make her feel something.

Curzon was passionate, too. So were the others. Torias, Emony, even Tobin in his quiet little way. They all had their particular branches of emotion, all brought their own ferocity to the table, all fed Dax’s heart with the pulse-beat of their own. Every one of Dax’s hosts had something to give, even shy little Jadzia on a good day. But none of them had ever allowed themselves to feel with the same kind of abandon as Joran. None of them cared as little, or felt as much. None of them were as raw or exposed or primal as he was, and Dax knew without needing to try that their honesty and integrity wouldn’t do her any good right now. The others couldn’t help her, not even Curzon; he was too honourable. Only Joran had the raw fury that she needed, the brutality to break through the empty space inside her, and if if letting him run wild in her dreams would help Dax to feel, then so be it. She would take him now, with open arms.

She did want to rest. She did want to sleep. And, for the first time in a very, very long time, she did want to dream.

*

_“What were you thinking?”_

_Shifting restlessly in his seat beside beside her, Jake Sisko raised his hand. “I know!” he cried, over-eager, and Dax recognised the newborn infant that Curzon once held in his arms. “I know!”_

_“Now, Jake…” Keiko shook her head, chastising but still somehow smiling. “It’s Jadzia’s turn now. You know better than to interrupt.”_

_Dax hung her head, feeling chastened as much on her own behalf as on Jake’s. She hadn’t even said anything yet, but she still felt horribly exposed, too big and too visible; the classroom wasn’t designed with adults in mind, and Jadzia wasn’t exactly small by any standards. The little chair felt flimsy under her weight, and her knees hurt where they were squashed and cramped under the tiny desk. She felt heavy and out of place, like her long limbs didn’t really fit her body, and she was painfully conscious of the children occupying the seats all around her._

_This was no place for her. But then, of course, where else could she go?_

_“Jadzia,” Keiko pressed. “We’re waiting.”_

_In spite of herself, Dax scowled. “I don’t know,” she said sullenly, and wished that the ground would open up and swallow her. “Maybe you should ask Jake instead. He seems to know a lot.”_

_“You see?” Jake crowed. “I’m smart. Uncle Curzon always said so.”_

_Had the young man really called her predecessor that? ‘Uncle’? It felt so formal, so out of place, and Dax couldn’t remember ever hearing it. It didn’t fit with what she knew, what she remembered. It didn’t fit in her memory, just like she didn’t fit in this chair. But there it was and here she was too, so what could she do but run with it and hope for the best?_

_“He said a lot of things,” she muttered. “Not many of them were true.”_

_“Jadzia!” Keiko scolded._

_“Sorry,” she muttered without sincerity, though she didn’t know which of them she was talking to any more._

_Keiko sighed, deep and heavy. She was clearly very disappointed in her, and Dax felt like the worst student in the galaxy. Old habits died hard, and shame coloured her cheeks. Distantly, she heard laughter; were the children mocking her? She supposed she deserved it. What was she doing here? How stupid must she be?_

_“I really wish you’d apply yourself a little more,” Keiko told her. “You’re quite intelligent, you know. You just need a little faith—” The word cut deep, igniting something sharp and painful in her chest, just out of reach. “—in your ability.”_

_“I don’t have any ability,” Dax insisted, petulant. “Curzon did, but I’m not him. Emony did, but I’m not her. Joran—”_

_“What have I told you about saying that name in front of the children?” Though she never raised her voice, there was a sharpness in her tone, fierce enough that Dax felt like she’d been rapped on the knuckles with a ruler._

_“I’m sorry…” she mumbled again, feeling insignificant and about thirty feet tall, and both at the same time. “I didn’t… I wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t think…”_

_Keiko’s face split into a broad smile, the kind she reserved for her very best students. “Correct!” she cried, with so much enthusiasm it was almost cloying. “You see? That wasn’t so hard, was it? All you have to do is apply yourself, and you’ll find the answers!”_

_Dax didn’t really believe that any more now than she had before, but Keiko was already turning her attention back to Jake, and she was so grateful that the focus wasn’t on her any more that she let it slide without argument. She was still a student, after all, and it wouldn’t do to talk back too much to the teacher. She tried to make herself look smaller, sinking as far down as she could into the tiny chair and praying that it would continue to support her weight. All she wanted was to get to the end of class without embarrassing herself, to get through the rest of the day without further incident, without any more fingers pointing at her or well-meaning teachers or judging looks, or smart-mouthed young men that she vividly remembered as babies._

_Of course, even that was too much to ask for. Not waiting so much as a moment for the dust to settle on her previous question, Keiko cast a probing look around the room, taking in the rest of the children, most of whom were still tittering behind their hands, and raised her voice just a little to remind them all who was in charge._

_“Now…” she went on in that sickly-sweet teacher’s voice, the one that made Dax feel oversized and very stupid. “Who can tell Jadzia why it’s usually a good idea to think before we act?”_

_Dax whined, sinking down even lower in the little chair._

_As usual, it was Jake’s eager voice that rose above the others, and Dax tried to block out the sound of it. She supposed it made a kind of sense that he would be the one rallying to teach her the things she should already know for herself. After all, he had known her in some body or another for pretty much his whole life. She remembered his tiny head, lost in Curzon’s big hands as he’d cradled him, swaddled in blankets, so fragile and so tiny. It was a fond memory, pleasant and comforting, and it lit her up from inside. Despite herself, despite the humiliation of being told how to use her common sense by a boy more than three hundred years her junior, she found herself smiling._

_“Do you find something amusing, Jadzia?”_

_Grimacing, she forced her focus back to the class, to Keiko and the children; all eyes were on her once more, and she fought down the urge to crawl under the table and hide. “No,” she mumbled. “No… I was just…”_

_“…daydreaming again.” Keiko sighed and shook her head again. “Jadzia, you have to come out of your own head sometimes. The universe doesn’t revolve around you. There are other people in this classroom. Do you really want their education to suffer for your self-indulgence?”_

_Dax felt a pang of something unpleasant, something like fear or guilt, or maybe both. It felt like the shame that turned her cheeks hot and darkened her spots, but worse. “Of course not,” she said quickly. “I don’t want anyone to suffer for me.”_

_Jake burst out laughing at that. Behind him, his Ferengi friend Nog followed suit. Then, one after another, the rest of the children joined in, the volume rising louder and louder until it was almost unbearable, until Dax could scarcely think through it, until the mocking cruelty of tiny children was all she could hear, all she knew. She felt like she was a child again too; in a heartbeat, she was little Jadzia, painfully shy and far too clever for her own good, hiding behind her intellect and ambition, hiding behind books and facts and the certainty that one day she would be joined, hiding behind anything she could find because it was safer than daring to peek out and learning that everyone else was laughing at her._

_They were laughing at her again now, and it hurt just as much now as it had back then._

_Humiliated, she dropped her head down to rest on the desk and covered it with her arms, huddling in a pathetic protective ball that offered little shelter from the barrage of pre-pubescent laughter. It would kill her as sure as any bat’leth, she knew; shame cut so much more deeply than an open wound._

_“That’s enough!”_

_Keiko’s voice rang out as clear as a bell, cutting through the laughter like the keenest blade. Dax breathed a sigh of relief, but she was still too mortified to look up. “Thank you,” she mumbled to the glass-on-plastic of the tabletop._

_Ignoring her gratitude, Keiko pressed on, addressing the whole class. “I think that’s more than enough for today. Clearly, Jadzia and I need to have a little talk. Alone.” Dax looked up just in time to see her grace the rest of the class with a disapproving scowl. “The rest of you can go.”_

_Dax groaned, dropping her head back down again. She was relieved that the children were leaving, but she wasn’t looking forward to having to explain herself all over again. Why couldn’t they just understand that she wasn’t as smart as they were? Why couldn’t Keiko see that trying to teach her anything was a lost cause? She was hopeless, useless, worthless; why couldn’t they all just accept that and leave her alone?_

_She let her eyes slide closed, trying to drown out the clamour of little footsteps and young high voices as they drifted away, leaving behind nothing but the hum of electricity through the desk’s computer screen, a vague vibration of electricity and static against her cheek, and the impatient huff of a highly aggravated teacher._

_“I’m disappointed in you, Jadzia.”_

_With a considerable effort, Dax pulled her head back up. She looked around the empty classroom, grateful for the silence but still afraid to look Keiko in the eye and see the disapproval that she knew was there. It was a wasted effort, of course; like all good teachers, Keiko refused to be avoided. She crouched down in front of the table, took Dax’s face in her hands, and made her look at her, forced her to gaze into her eyes and see her. Innocuous as it was, the gesture felt like an invasion of privacy, like a step into her personal space, and Dax recoiled. It was unnerving, frightening, and highly upsetting._

_“You really should know better.”_

_“I know,” Dax said. “I know I should. But you’ve got to understand, I didn’t… I’m not as smart as they are. I’m not… I’m not as good… I…”_

_“You’re making excuses.” She sighed, releasing Dax’s face and settling back on her haunches. “Jadzia, you are a bright and talented young woman. You can’t keep pretending you don’t understand. You can’t keep pretending you don’t see the consequences of your actions.”_

_“But I…” Dax tried to look away, but she couldn’t. “It was an accident. I never meant…”_

_“I know you never meant to.” Keiko sighed deeply. “How many times do we have to talk about this before you accept it? Nobody is blaming you for making mistakes. In fact, it’s perfectly natural. Everyone makes them sometimes. It’s what makes us human.” She trailed off, eyes darting to the twin lines of spots marking Dax’s face. “Well, it makes us humanoid, anyway.”_

_“But I wasn’t…”_

_Keiko silenced her with a look. She reached out, let her fingertips graze along the right-side line of spots, tracing its pattern from her temple down to her jaw. “It’s not the mistakes that matter, Jadzia. It’s how we handle them. And you always handle yours badly.”_

_Dax wrung her hands. “I can’t help it.”_

_Keiko leaned back a little, just far enough for Dax to take in her whole face instead of just her eyes, far enough that she could see the blood drying at her throat, a perfect thin line. Everything looked so simple, red and white and straight and neat. Clean lines, clean cuts, a clean and painless death. No mess, no suffering. Dax wished it was really like that. She wished this was how it truly was, but she knew better. Jake had never called Curzon ‘uncle’, and Keiko hadn’t died a clean and painless death._

_“Yes, you can,” Keiko told her, oblivious. “You can’t self-destruct over every little thing that goes wrong. You have to pick yourself up and move on. You have to—”_

_“You died because of me,” Dax blurted out, broken and helpless. “You died because of me, and so did Nerys. So many people die because of me, and I can’t… I won’t…”_

_“Jadzia.” Keiko sighed, deep and low but laced with the infinite patience of an educator. “You think you’ve killed so many people, but it’s all just in here.” Gently and not without empathy, she tapped the side of Dax’s head. “You have to realise by now that you would never really do the things you do inside here. Not really. Not out there, where it matters.”_

_Though she knew better than trying to argue with a teacher, Dax tried to shake her head, tried to lock in on the truth, to fixate on what her memory told her was real instead of what truly was. Keiko had died a quick and painless death, and Jake Sisko would always call Curzon Dax ‘uncle’. She needed to believe that. She needed to believe that—_

_“Major Kira is on Bajor. You know that, Jadzia.”_

_“No.” Dax shook her head again, desperate and frightened. “No, she’s dead. I killed her. Again and again, I killed her. I killed her so many times. She…”_

_“She’s on duty,” Keiko told her again. “She’s on Bajor, exactly where you left her.” She smiled, and it was so earnest, so sincere, that Dax almost believed it. She gave Dax’s hand a final reassuring squeeze, then let it drop back down to the table. “Jadzia. You can’t blame yourself for every bad thing that happens.”_

_“I can when it’s my fault,” Dax insisted._

_She was hurt now, and angry. How dare Keiko try to stop her from hating herself? What gave her the right to take that away? Who told her she could tear away the only thing in two universes that Dax could still be sure of? She was dead, wasn’t she? Why wasn’t she casting Dax down where she stood? Why wasn’t she condemning her for everything she’d done? Why didn’t she hate her?_

_“You know it won’t change anything,” she said instead. “Jadzia, you can’t destroy yourself every time you mis-step. It won’t do me any good, will it? I’ll still be dead, no matter how hard you lash your own back.” She sighed again, very softly this time. “You’re not Curzon any more. You’re not strong enough to carry all those burdens on your shoulders like he did. You can’t take responsibility for every broken thing that falls down in front of you, and you can’t try to protect every lost soul you’ll ever meet. Eventually someone will get hurt. Eventually, someone will die. You can’t prevent that, Jadzia, and you can’t change it.”_

_“But…”_

_“No.” Keiko leaned in, brushing a non-existent tear from Dax’s face. “You can’t. Nobody can. You can only do your best, and hope it’s enough.”_

_“What if it isn’t?” Dax asked. “What if my best gets you killed?”_

_“Then it is what it is,” Keiko said calmly. “But even if it is, at least you’ll know you tried.”_

_“It’s not good enough,” Dax whispered, and closed her eyes._

_When she opened them again, less than a moment later, she was back on Terok Nor, back in Ore Processing, back in that hated and hateful place. She was back, and the sick dread that landed like a lead weight in her stomach was almost enough to drive her to her knees._

_Keiko was already on hers. She knelt just a few feet away, with Garak towering like a tyrant over her. His face was a rancid mess of scarring and poorly stitched flesh, half-open wounds oozing with blood and pus. He looked half-dead himself, so much worse than she remembered, and Dax knew that that was her fault as well. His face was falling apart, rotting and wretched, held together by dissolving sutures, and that was her fault. The heat and the sweat, the scent of blood on the air, the countless faces without names that passed by as though in a dream, slaves to the grind, losing their lives and their souls, losing everything they had… that was all her fault too. Everything was. Everything. This terrible place and the lost souls that inhabited it. It was all her fault._

_Keiko was about to die, and that was her fault too. The only difference now was that she was going to see it._

_“I can’t,” she choked. “I can’t watch this. Please don’t make me. I can’t… I can’t…”_

_“You can,” Keiko said, voice ringing through the sweat and the heat and the sound of countless Terrans working and dying around them, countless lives carved out in stone. “You can, and you will.”_

_“Please.” Dax tried to shut her eyes again, but they would not close. Her body wouldn’t respond to any of her instructions. She struggled, desperate to move, to turn around, to run and hide, to duck and cover, to do anything she could, to gouge out those traitorous eyes if that was what it took to keep from seeing this, from turning it into something real and true, something she couldn’t deny._

_“Please,” she whispered again. “Please, don’t make me watch…”_

_But it was too late. When Keiko smiled at her again, she was already half-dead. Her eyes, dark and glittering, were the only thing left alive in this death-darkened place, the only source of light at all. Dax couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop, couldn’t do anything, and she watched with open-mouthed horror as Keiko’s smile widened, smiling even as the last of her blood ran down to the floor, smiling even as Garak drained her dry, smiling even as she suffered, smiling and smiling and smiling even as Dax started to scream._

_“I’m a teacher, Jadzia. Learn from me.”_

*

She was still screaming when she woke up.

Before she’d even fully come back to herself, she was aware of Jadzia’s presence, her cool body hovering over her, strong arms cradling her, keeping her safe and protected. She wanted to lose herself in those arms, to let herself imagine that they really could keep her safe, that either one of them might stand a chance of surviving the demons inside of them.

“It’s okay,” Jadzia was murmuring; the words sounded strange in her voice, grating a little unnaturally in a throat that was clearly more accustomed to commands and authority than compassion and sympathy. “It’s okay. You’re out. It’s over. It’s over.”

But it wasn’t over, and that was part of the problem.

Dax had been ready to deal with Joran. She had been ready for violence and bloodlust and hatred. She had been ready to wake up raving, to wash down the taste of blood with fear and confusion, to chase it up with the depth of anger that she could not control. She had been ready for the need, the hunger, the _want_ , the urge to break and bruise and bleed, to destroy. She’d been ready to kill, but she hadn’t been ready for death.

She certainly hadn’t been ready for Keiko. For all that she’d thought she was prepared for anything, she was not ready for that.

She was drenched in sweat, she realised as she tried to sit up, but chilled to the bone. She felt so cold that even her stoic Trill resilience balked at the sensation, but she was flushed and feverish as well. It felt odd, but she supposed no odder than anything else she’d felt — or failed to feel — since leaving Terok Nor.

“I can’t…” she forced out against Jadzia’s collarbone, cool flesh against her mouth, still swimming in the last moments of the dream, in Keiko’s last breath. “I can’t watch this. Please…”

Jadzia pulled back. Her eyes that shone so much bluer than Dax’s own. “You were just dreaming,” she said, like Dax didn’t know that, like she needed someone to tell her. “It was just a dream, okay? It was just a silly dream.”

Dax swallowed over a tongue turned dry with the taste of ore. She had to downplay it, she realised, make light of the memory, the revenant, the echo of it in her head, had to make light of everything because Jadzia couldn’t know that this was where she was going. She couldn’t know that this was her happy ending, that this was what she would get if she was lucky. She had to believe that it was nothing, that it was Dax’s own weakness making her shake like this, that she would be better when it was her turn.

“I know,” she managed, biting down the urge to lash out at the word ‘silly’. “I know it was. But it felt so real.”

Jadzia bit her lip. Dax watched as the blood beaded under her teeth. She thought about leaning up, licking it from her mouth, but she refrained because her limbs still felt heavy and she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to do much of anything without falling forwards.

“They do that,” Jadzia murmured, hazy and indistinct, and for a moment it was as though she wasn’t really there at all, as though she’d forgotten she was with Dax at all, trapped as she was inside of her own troubled thoughts. “The hallucinations feel that way too. So real. So vivid, and so…” She shook her head, unable to finish, though Dax knew what she wanted to say as surely as she did. _Frightening_. Her eyes slid closed and pulled Dax in again, but this time it was to comfort them both. “Believe me, I know.”

And she did. That was the impossible thing, the thing that even now Dax was struggling to comprehend. She did know. She really, truly did.

Dax thought back to her her conversation with Kira before all this had happened, that too-fleeting moment on the runabout in the heartbeat before Sisko had shown up. Dax had been so sure, so convinced that Kira understood her. She knew what it meant to feel like the person inside was wrong, to feel like _she_ was wrong, and she knew how it felt to give in to instincts that frightened her; she knew how sharp those instincts could be, how pointed their teeth and how deadly their claws. She had spent her whole life living through the chaos that Dax was only just discovering for the first time, and as they’d talked about it, Dax had really felt like she understood.

Suddenly, she knew better. Suddenly, it felt like Kira hadn’t understood anything, like she’d been taking blinded shots in the dark and hit the target by pure chance. Kira’s experiences were her own, and so were Dax’s. Kira couldn’t possibly understand any of this, any more than Dax could understand what it was like to live under the Cardassian occupation. For Kira, her life’s experience defined her; for Dax, she had been defined anew by the hallucinations, the confusion, the unspeakable anger, by a lifetime’s worth of new and old memories suddenly superimposed over seven others. Kira couldn’t comprehend that any more than Dax could comprehend her life, the choice of terrorism or death, of murder to breed even the faintest glimmer of hope. Their lives were so completely separate, so fundamentally different, and their experiences were utterly unique. In truth, neither of them could ever understand the first thing about the other.

It was so different with Jadzia. Dax was Jadzia, and Jadzia was Dax. They were the same person, not just in theory, but in fact. They came from different universes, yes, and those universes had shaped them in different ways, but right down at the hammering heart of it all, they were the same person. This Jadzia, this aggressive young woman holding her close an wrapping her up in arms so much like her own… this Jadzia did understand her. Intimately, and on a level that nobody else ever would or could. Not even Nerys. Maybe especially not Nerys. Jadzia knew how it felt to have dreams that weren’t really dreams, how it felt to be lost in the subconscious chaos of a sickly symbiont, to drown in memories and thoughts and emotions that didn’t belong to her and yet were still hers. She understood everything because she was everything.

Gathering her strength, letting the familiarity bolster it, Dax eased herself upright. She looked at Jadzia, and saw the same hurt and sorrow reflected in her eyes, the fear that she was still struggling to hold down, even now. She forced herself to smile, even if it was wanly, and touched her hand. _I’m here too,_ she said with the contact. _Just like you are. I’m here, and I know._

She didn’t say it out loud; she didn’t need to. Instead, she just asked, “Have they gotten worse since I left?”

Jadzia shook her head, then seemed to think better of trying to lie to the one person who would see through it. She chuckled at herself, then shrugged instead, looking down as though ashamed, as though it was her fault that her body was failing her now, as though it was her fault that the Symbiosis Commission had done this to her.

“A little,” she admitted, very quietly.

“A little?” Dax prompted, knowing better than to take that answer at its word. “And by ‘a little’, you really mean…”

“I mean ‘a little’,” Jadzia snapped, every bit as stubborn as Dax herself would have. “They’re not… they’re not bad, exactly. It’s not like they’re nightmares, or anything like that.”

“Be thankful for that,” Dax muttered, and instantly regretted it.

Jadzia’s eyes widened for a moment, catching the glimpse of her future, but she shook it off and tried to focus on her current issue. “Well, it’s not like that,” she said again, gesturing vaguely with one hand and balling the other into a fist at her side, frustration building. “They’re just… they’re just _there_. And I can’t ignore them or escape them or… or…”

Dax nodded, resting a hand on her shoulder, soothing her. “They’re just there,” she echoed, then sighed as she thought again of her dreams. “And they feel so real.”

She remembered the heat and the sweat, Keiko’s face and the laughter of children. It was all so simple, but all of a sudden it seemed so much more frightening than all the blood and gore in the galaxy. It was one thing to dream of impossible deeds, of killing someone she cared about over and over again, only to wake and know it was a dream because nobody could die that many times, even at her hand. It was one thing to dream of fantasies, even twisted ones, but to dream of the truth was something else entirely. For the first time, the dream had felt real because it was.

For a moment or two, Jadzia seemed to turn inwards. Dax let her hand slide down, resting over the back of her hand, not holding it, just offering a grounding point, a reminder that she was there, that they both were, that they were there and together, and they would work through this. Somehow, they would work through it.

“It feels like…” Jadzia sucked in a breath, fingers flexing under Dax’s hand. “It’s like a song you only half-remember…”

That was the most accurate description Dax had ever heard, and she shivered a little at the potency of it. That was exactly how it had happened for her, after all, the moment she’d first felt the tug of repressed memories, the moment she’d felt something she didn’t understand, a strange sense of familiarity that made no sense. That was all it was, a half-remembered song resonating in the back of her mind, an itch of symphonic memory, a talent half-buried, and right on its heels a temper that she couldn’t understand and couldn’t control.

She remembered the look on Benjamin’s face, the way she’d yelled and accused and come so close to punching him, the way she’d upended their chess game instead and stormed out. She remembered Kira afterwards, uncomfortable in the role of peacemaker and easily frightened off. She remembered feeling it for the first time, then, that sick sense of pleasure as the concern on Kira’s face dissolved into fear. She was afraid, and Dax had felt so powerful…

But then she remembered what had come next, the terror when that first hallucination hit, the violent jolt back to reality and the sudden horrifying certainty that something was very wrong, that this was not her, that she was not the person she was becoming. Surreal and indistinct as it was, the hallucination had struck her with an unfathomable depth of clarity. For all that it had made no sense, it had felt so real, so visceral. Like that half-remembered song, she knew it.

“He was a musician,” she murmured out loud, apropos of nothing.

Jadzia blinked her confusion. “Huh?”

“Joran. He was a musician. A composer.” The elucidation seemed to do little to assuage Jadzia’s somewhat understandable befuddlement, so Dax went on. “It’s just… well, that’s how it started. For me, I mean. With a half-remembered song. I knew it, and I knew that I knew it. But I just couldn’t quite grasp it. I couldn’t make sense of where it had come from or what it was, or… or…”

She heard the melody in her head again, instinctively humming out the first few notes, letting the rhythm comfort her, remembering the sense of triumph as he’d completed the composition and heard it through for the first time. She closed her eyes, enjoying it, and when she opened them again, she saw pain and fear reflected in Jadzia’s eyes, touched by something that looked like envy.

“Sounds frustrating,” she said, but she didn’t sound particularly sympathetic. “I don’t remember anything. Nothing like that, anyway. I just… I just feel things…”

“Angry,” Dax said. “And violent. And so full of hate.”

Jadzia nodded, but didn’t dwell on it. “They’re so vivid.” She was talking about the hallucinations again, Dax knew, and so she didn’t interrupt. “They’re so real, so visceral, so… so…” She shook her head. “One minute I’m scared to death, and the next I feel like nothing in the galaxy could stop me, like I’m so powerful I could do anything… and I’m so angry, so violent, so…”

“…so out of control,” Dax finished quietly.

Jadzia nodded. She folded her hands in her lap, inching a short distance away. Dax understood the need for space, letting her go without comment, giving her whatever room she needed to compose herself and clear her thoughts, to try and make some order from all the chaos inside. It was hard enough, most days, with so many lifetimes to contend with, so many conflicting personalities, opinions, ideas, so many things clashing against each other with every passing second. With Joran — and, in Jadzia’s case, a Joran that hadn’t quite surfaced yet — it was a thousand times worse. Dax remembered that feeling all too well, struggling with things she didn’t understand throughout that forever-lasting trip back to the Trill homeworld.

It wasn’t the nervousness that had crippled her. She had felt it, yes, uncomfortable with the idea of going back and seeing all those people who had passed her death sentence as an initiate and then taken it back so freely, those people who had washed her out and then let her back in. But that wasn’t what had driven her to Julian Bashir’s quarters that night. That wasn’t what had rendered her so small and helpless, what had left her so afraid of being alone. That had nothing to do with the Symbiosis Commission… and, truth be told, it wasn’t even really anything to do with her condition.

What had really laid her low, rendered her almost unable to function, was the inability to process her thoughts. It had never been really easy; honestly, it still wasn’t, and part of her supposed it never would be. That was one of the simultaneous blessings and curses of being joined, she supposed, the inability to think about anything in simple or linear terms, even something as painful as this. It was very likely that she would never have a normal symbiont-host relationship with Joran, that the unique circumstances of his surfacing would leave a crack inside of her forever. She’d come to terms with that now, but at the time it had almost destroyed her.

This wasn’t the typical Trill confusion, and she’d never known anything like it. She was used to the mundane, to Emony or Lela feeling disgust in the same moment that Curzon or Torias felt elation, to Tobin’s awkwardness clashing against Audrid’s surety, but this was nothing like that. It wasn’t Jadzia being confused about something even as one host or another reminded her that she knew it by heart. This was pure undiluted chaos. There really was no other word to describe it, and her head had felt just about ready to explode.

Julian had given her company that night, and that had given her comfort. She had felt safe with him, and not just because he was her friend. He was a doctor, too, and Dax had taken solace in knowing that he would be there, ready to take action if something happened, ready to do whatever it took to help her regain some kind of order inside her head. He wasn’t like the doctors on Trill, the ones she was so afraid of, and his presence gave her courage where theirs just filled her with fear.

She wondered how it would have felt to take that trip alone. It was hard enough to deal with all that in the company of people she could trust, but to go through it all by herself? To have only her own shoulders to lay that burden on, only her own voice to hear her fears, only her own arms to wrap around herself? She couldn’t imagine it, and she didn’t want to. But one look at Jadzia, one look into those wide blue eyes so much like Dax’s own, one look into that fear-lined face, so young and yet somehow so much older, she saw that Jadzia could. She could, and she did. Every day, every minute, she did.

“You don’t have to worry about feeling like that,” she said, voice gone heavy with sincerity, realising not for the first time just how deeply lonely Jadzia must be feeling. “You’re not alone. Not any more.”

Jadzia sighed. The sound was as heavy as Dax’s own voice, but burdened with something entirely different. “I wish I could believe you,” she murmured sadly.

Dax frowned. She hadn’t expected that. “Why can’t you?”

Looking suddenly self-conscious, Jadzia turned her face away. Dax watched as she studied the wall, then the ceiling, then the floor, finally settling her gaze on the edge of the bed, the way the covers lay crumpled over it. She looked like she wanted to crawl inside them, wrap herself up and hide from the world, from Dax and her empathy, from the question, from herself.

She looked very small, hopeless and frightened, and Dax wanted nothing more than to reassure her again, and again, as many times as it took to make her believe it. She wanted to tell her that that everything would be all right, that she was there, that they were there together, that they would get through this. She wanted so badly just to take all the conflict away from her, all the strain and the confusion, the aggression that she did not understand and all the fear it brought. She wanted so desperately to say all those things, to make them real, to make Jadzia hear them and feel them and believe them. She wanted so badly to help, but the words lodged in her throat and she found that she could not say anything at all.

“You’re my only hope,” Jadzia whispered at last, and there was so much despair in the words that it almost made Dax choke. “You. Nobody else.”

“That’s all right,” Dax said, and willed them both to believe it. “I know what I’m doing. I went through it as well, you know.”

Jadzia’s eyes were bright and wet when she looked back up. “No,” she said softly. “That’s just it. You talk about it like it’s something that happened to you. Like you had a couple of hallucinations and you went to Trill and they fixed you up and it’s all okay now. You talk about it like it’s just a thing that happened to you, like it’s something you went through but that’s okay because it’s all over now, like it’s all just some exciting new experience for the symbiont. But that’s not what it’s like. It’s not how it is for me, and it’s not how it really was for you.”

Dax frowned, not wanting to hear this. “What do you mean?” she asked, even though she didn’t want to know.

Jadzia sighed. “I mean it’s not just something you went through,” she said. “It’s something you’re still going through.”

Dax felt her jaw clench. “Jadzia…”

“I’m serious. You think I can’t see how much it’s still hurting you? You think I haven’t noticed the way your hands are shaking, or the way you flinch?” She leaned in, but didn’t touch her. “It’s not just the dreams, is it? It’s everything, and it’s all the time. It’s always there. It’s always…” She trailed off, breath hitching in her chest.

There was no denying it. Jadzia would see the lie in her just as surely as she herself would have seen it if their positions were reversed. “It’s always there,” she admitted, very quietly.

Jadzia nodded, tears bright in her eyes. “So there it is. You’re my only hope. My only hope in two universes, and you’re… well, look at you.” She shook her head, overwhelmed, and Dax felt her own eyes start to sting as well. “That’s all I’ve got. Just you. Just you, and you’re even worse off than I am.”

“I’m sorry,” Dax whispered. “I’m sorry I’m not better for you. I’m sorry I don’t have some magical cure. I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Jadzia snapped. “I don’t want your ‘sorry’ and I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t need any of that. I just… I just need…” She did touch her then, reaching out and shaking her, and for a moment Dax felt like she was back on Terok Nor, back against the Intendant’s wall, teeth rattling and head spinning. “I just need to know: where does that leave me? If you’re where I’m headed… if you’re what I’m going to be…” Her voice broke. “…what the hell do I have to look forward to?”

For the first time, Dax had no answer.


	23. Chapter 23

“It’s not really about you.”

Jadzia bristled, insulted. “Wake up,” she snapped. “You _are_ me. Everything you are is about me. That’s why you’re here in the first place, isn’t it?” She looked almost angry, but the expression softened a little as she caught the grief on Dax’s face; Dax wondered if she recognised the shadows of Terok Nor, the pain that came from without and not within. “I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind. I know what’s happening to me, and I can see what’s happening to you.”

“You don’t—”

“Yes, I do.” She clenched her jaw, clearly fighting for control. “Why can’t you just be straight with me? Why can’t you just stand up and admit that we’re both screwed, no matter what happens?”

Dax took a steadying breath, held it for a moment, then exhaled tightly; her own self-control was fraying too, a shattered reflection of Jadzia’s. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

Jadzia barked a laugh; it was a bitter and humourless sound, as sharp as a blade if not quite so clean. “Don’t I?” she demanded. “Because from where I standing, I think I know it at least as well as you do.”

Futile as it was, stubbornness forced Dax to hold her ground. “You don’t,” she said again. “You just think you do. You think you know everything, don’t you?” She threw up her hands, feeling her temper start to swell, and she was so relieved just to be feeling something that she didn’t even try to rein it in. “You’re so damned arrogant. You’re just like—”

“—you,” Jadzia finished for her, bitter triumph turning her voice thick. “I’m just like _you_ , you idiot.”

Like a balloon deflating, Dax felt the fight go out of her, taking the blissful flicker of feeling with it. “I suppose you are,” she said with a sigh.

“Look,” Jadzia pressed, softly but with urgency. “It’s hard. You know it’s hard and I know it’s hard. You don’t have to tell me that, and I shouldn’t have to tell you either. We’re both living through this thing. We both know what it’s like, and you have to stop…” She trailed off, seeming to falter for a moment, then found her courage again. “You have to stop trying to protect me.”

“I’m not,” Dax insisted. “Believe me, I want you to be as prepared as possible. But it’s not about you, and it’s not about…” She couldn’t say his name, she realised, and that startled her. “It’s not about what you’re going through.”

Jadzia sighed. “Then what is it about?”

The tone of her voice made it clear that she knew the answer. Dax could feel the unspoken words rippling through the air between them. _Terok Nor_. She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear to see the empathy in Jadzia’s eyes, the lines of her own exhaustion softening as she tried to take some of Dax’s. She hated that she knew, but she hated far more that she didn’t. She knew that place, knew the Intendant, and Dax supposed she had her own ideas about what went on over there. But she didn’t know Keiko, and now she never would.

“Don’t,” she said again. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here for you, okay? This isn’t about me, it’s about—”

“It’s about us,” Jadzia insisted. “We’re both the same, you and me. Nobody else could hope to understand. Not even Benjamin. Not mine, and not yours. Not really. I don’t care how much kinder or gentler he is. I don’t care how much better he is than mine. I don’t care who the hell he is. He can’t understand. Neither of them can. We’re the only ones who understand. You and me, Jadzia.”

“Don’t call me that,” Dax said, reflexively. “And don’t lecture me. I know how this thing works. I know it a whole lot better than—”

“No.” The word was barked out like an order, as so many of her words were, sharp and clipped. “The only thing you know better than me is _him_. Joran. That’s all. Nothing else. So stop trying to make me believe that you’re the only one who knows anything. Stop trying to convince us both that you’re so much better than me, that you’re worth more just because your universe is a little cleaner.”

“I’m not worth more,” Dax said. Her jaw was starting to ache again, and all the more as the truth of the words struck deep. “I’m not worth anything.”

“Well, you certainly don’t act that way,” Jadzia snapped, jabbing a finger at her; Dax wondered if she was losing herself to her temper again, if Joran was driving her more than she was driving herself. “You act like you’re the only one in this place who’s ever done a good deed. You act like you’re so pure, so whole, like you’ve never made a damn mistake in your life.”

“I’ve made mistakes,” Dax said. She thought of Keiko, of Garak and the way he’d called her out on all the mistakes that had led to that sickening moment.

“Of course you have.” Jadzia’s voice softened, just a little. “Everyone has. But you act like a mistake is a death sentence.”

That was true. Stubborn as she was, Dax hated to admit it, but it was true just the same. Mistakes carried extra weight for joined Trills, and she knew that better than most. Curzon’s mistakes still weighed heavily on Jadzia, all the stupid things he’d done with young Benjamin Sisko, and the countless indiscretions that had peppered his colourful life. Jadzia Dax had stood trial for his mistakes, had almost taken a life on his behalf, had been strung up time and time again by his mis-steps. As often as they helped to strengthen and fortify her, his memories were a burden too, and they hung like a chain around her neck. His was the devilish little voice in the back of her head telling her that one more bloodwine wouldn’t hurt, the voice that said there was no shame in sleeping with a married woman if she was willing, the voice that said only fools played by the rules, the voice that took pride in all the things that shamed the symbiont.

Mistakes made by a joined Trill lived on forever, from host to host, each one carrying it in their own unique way, and Jadzia felt that burden all too heavily. She knew, deep inside, that she was supposed to leave Dax’s former hosts in the past, that her duty was to to learn from them but never allow herself to be overwhelmed by them. But with a predecessor like Curzon, that was difficult, and all the more so given Jadzia’s own self-consciousness and the lingering doubts left by her initial failure as an initiate. What if letting her reapply was another of his mistakes? She had trawled his memories about that incident more times than she could count, but she’d never found an answer; whatever he felt about her, he didn’t want her to know about it. Self-conscious as she was, it was all too easy to draw the natural conclusion: that she was just one more of Curzon’s countless mistakes.

There were so many of them already, so many mistakes spread across so many years. Was it any wonder that each new one bore down a little more heavily when her shoulders already held more than they could carry?

“I’m not like you,” she heard herself say, shocked by the resentment in her voice, wondering for a moment where it had come from. “I can’t do stupid things and then wash my hands of them like it’s not important.”

Jadzia glared, and Dax was sure she saw a hint of Joran in the tense line of her jaw. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

The words were out before Dax had even realised she was thinking them. “You were exiled.”

Jadzia stiffened, but Dax knew her own face far too well to miss the pain striking like lightning across the cool water of her eyes, turning them to frost. “Who told you about that?” she hissed. “Was it Benjamin?”

“It was the Intendant,” Dax said, but didn’t give Jadzia a chance to absorb the information; neither of them needed any more reason to hate the Intendant, after all, and for once she wasn’t the issue here. “That’s why you can’t go to Trill, isn’t it? It has nothing to do with this rebellion of yours. It’s because you’re exiled.”

Looking hurt and heartbroken, but still flushed with anger, Jadzia lurched off the bed. She paced the length of the small chamber for a few moments, fists clenching and unclenching at her sides, breathing deep and slow. Dax couldn’t figure out whether she was trying to curb her temper or balm the heartache, but either way she was smart enough not to interrupt.

She hadn’t wanted to bring it up like this. She hadn’t even realised she’d been thinking of it at all, though she supposed some part of her had never really stopped thinking about it since the moment the Intendant had brought it up. She thought back to that moment now, remembering how angry she’d been, how furious that Jadzia had kept something like that from her, how wounded and frustrated. She had lost herself a little, she knew, drowned to the anger and the rage, let Joran pour out his hatred into her sense of betrayal, and for just a few seconds, she’d allowed herself to hate Jadzia too. 

But she didn’t feel that way now. The hate had dissolved as quickly as the fit of temper, strangled by the Intendant just like every other part of her. Too much had happened since then, too many other things all clamouring for places in her head and her heart, and there hadn’t been any room left for Jadzia’s impulsive stupidity. She’d still wanted an explanation, of course, but she hadn’t wanted it like this. With all the tension still bubbling between them, the last thing she’d wanted was to turn it into a confrontation.

“Did I say it had anything to do with the rebellion?” Jadzia demanded. She was facing the wall, so all Dax could make out was the stiffness of her shoulders and the tension in her spine. “Did I say anything about it at all?”

“No,” Dax conceded. “But you should have.”

Jadzia’s spine straightened, and Dax swore she could see the anger flaring even higher in her, the air crackling hotly in the space between them. “Why? My personal choices aren’t any of your business.”

“They shouldn’t be,” Dax agreed, quite readily. “But when you’re putting my life on the line, risking my neck to get you what you need because you can’t go home…” She shook her head, though she knew that Jadzia wouldn’t be able to see it, and balled her own fists. “Don’t you think I had a right to know why?”

Jadzia’s shoulders heaved as she sighed. “You wouldn’t have gone if you’d known.” 

There was a kind of defeatism in the way she spoke. She wasn’t asking Dax what she would have done, she realised, she was telling her. She was speaking as though it had actually happened that way, as though Dax had already told her that she wouldn’t, as though she really had turned her back on her. She already had her tried and convicted, so damn sure that she would turn around and walk away over something like this, that she would condemn her to die without even giving her a chance to explain why.

“You’re putting words in my mouth,” she said.

“I’m telling you what would have happened,” Jadzia argued. “You’re a joined Trill. It’s your duty to turn your back on me. And we both know you take your duty too damn seriously to neglect it now. You would have told me it was my own fault, that I’d made my bed and now I’d have to lie in it. You would have—”

“Don’t tell me what I would and wouldn’t do!” Dax’s voice was sharper than she meant it to be, and much louder, but she didn’t have the patience to try and lower it. “You should know me better than that. Dammit, Jadzia, you _are_ me! You of all people should know that I would never, ever turn my back on someone who needed me.”

“And how the hell would I know that?” Jadzia demanded, shoulders slumping. “I would’ve turned mine.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Dax had never been more certain of anything in her life. “You’d like to believe that you would, but deep down you know you’re better than that. It’s so easy to pretend you’re some kind of self-serving pariah, isn’t it? It’s so easy to pretend that you only care about making yourself comfortable, that you’d go running back to the Intendant in a heartbeat if the whim took you… but it never does. You could’ve gone back any time you wanted, but you haven’t. Because you care.”

“The hell I do,” Jadzia hissed, like Dax had just accused her of some horrible crime. “I’ve stuck around because Benjamin would get his head blown off if I wasn’t around to make sure he keeps it on straight.”

“Sure you are. And if you sing that song often enough, maybe you’ll actually believe it. Maybe you’ll even convince yourself that you’re only in his bed because it’s better than sleeping on the floor. But you and I both know that’s bullshit. The truth is, you gave up a comfortable life for him because you believe in him and what he’s doing here. You want so desperately to think that the only thing you care about is yourself, that you’re a mercenary in nature as well as in name, but we both know that’s just not true. Your heart is too big. It always has been.”

Moving slowly, Jadzia turned back to face her. Dax sucked in her breath at the trail of tears staining the sides of her face, starker and more pronounced than even the delicate Trill spots. Though her shoulders had barely moved the whole time she’d been facing the wall, she looked as though she’d been sobbing quite violently, and her chest was heaving in ragged gasping breaths.

“And there’s your answer,” she said in a broken whisper. “You want to know why I was exiled? There it is. That’s why.”

Dax winced, then sighed. “Because your heart’s too big.” It wasn’t a question. “Because you care.”

“Too much.” The words were a curse. “Because I care too damn much.”

Dax took a step tentative forwards. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of…”

“Yes it is,” Jadzia insisted, though she sounded almost like she was pleading, like she was begging for Dax’s permission to hate herself for it. “I couldn’t let her go.” The confession came from some place deep inside of her, a private place she’d locked away even from herself. “I couldn’t lose her again. I gave up everything that had ever mattered to me, everything I’d worked for… everything we’d both worked for. I gave up everything, and I made her give up everything too, because I couldn’t bear to lose her again. I couldn’t let her go. I _couldn’t_.”

“I understand,” Dax said, though she didn’t.

As comforting as it was, Jadzia refused to indulge the lie. “No, you don’t,” she said. “And I hope you never do.”

The fight went out of Dax. It was hard enough to be angry at Jadzia when she was looking at her like that, so wretched and broken and miserable, so wrought with pain. It was hard enough to be angry at her when she could see the heart spilled out in countless colours on her sleeve, the same heart she felt beating inside her own chest, at least when she was capable of feeling. All that was hard enough, but to hear the anguish in her voice as well, the tremors that said she was one breath away from a breakdown, to hear the sob rattle in her chest and see the echoes of tears already shed painting trails down her cheeks… it was too much. It was all too much, and what little echo of anger Dax had been able to muster bled and melted away. It was too much for Dax; it was even too much for Joran.

So, instead, she looked away, staring at the spot on the wall that she had beaten bloody the last time she was here. She clasped her hands behind her back, wringing them in a futile bid at keeping them steady, at holding herself steady, while she gave Jadzia the space and time she needed to compose herself.

At last, when Jadzia’s lips stopped trembling and the tracks of tears were dry and cold, Dax ventured to speak again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I asked about it, and I’m sorry I got angry.”

“Don’t be,” Jadzia said. “You didn’t get angry. And even if you had, you would have been right to be. Because you were right: I should’ve told you why I couldn’t go to Trill. I should’ve told you I was exiled from the start. You had the right to know, and to choose for yourself whether I was worth what you did for me. I’m sorry I didn’t…” She swallowed, throat spasming. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”

Dax shrugged. “Trust is a wonderful thing,” she said, and remembered saying the same thing to Nerys a thousand lifetimes ago. “But it’s hard to come by.”

“Still,” Jadzia sighed. “You would’ve been right to turn your back on me. Exile is… it’s not something you can just take and then throw away. It’s a stain on everything you are, and you can’t wash it clean. It takes you and your symbiont, and everything either of you have ever done, and it grinds you down into dust. It sets fire to everything you know, everything you were, and everything you are.” She shook her head. “Exile is giving up everything that ever mattered, everything that was ever important. It’s giving up _everything_. And sometimes the thing you’re giving it all up for… sometimes that thing doesn’t last very long. But once you’re exiled… that does last. That lasts forever. It’s everything, and it’s forever.”

Dax remembered the Intendant’s words back on Terok Nor. She remembered the calculated cruelty of them, the deliberate softness. _“Such a terrible tragedy, what happened to her,”_ she’d said, because she had known how deeply that tragedy still hurt. It didn’t take a genius to fill in the blanks of this particular story, but Dax still felt a kick in her heart to see the loss so real and so raw on Jadzia’s face. It was one thing to hear about it, but another thing entirely to see it. Seeing was believing, as Benjamin so often said, but more than that, it was understanding.

“How long?” she asked, reverent. “How long did you have? Before you… before she…”

“Before she died, you mean?” Jadzia’s voice was strained, made tight with the kind of false fury that Dax knew all too well, forced aggression to cover over a pain that ran far too deep to articulate. “Less than a year, if you must know. It was…” She closed her eyes, trembling, and Dax watched a single crystalline tear catch on her lashes. “It was even worse than the first time. It’s so much worse when you’re the one left behind, isn’t it? It’s so much worse when you’re the one living with the consequences. Torias never knew how lucky he was that he died first.”

Dax thought of Nilani, the only Kahn she would ever know, and her heart ached. “No,” she agreed softly. “He had no idea.”

“I gave up everything,” Jadzia murmured, as though she’d forgotten Dax was there at all. “ _We_ gave up everything. Both of us. We agreed to pay the price, together. But then… then she was gone, and suddenly it was just me, and it’s so… it’s so much harder to keep paying the price when you have to pay it alone.”

Dax found herself thinking about Benjamin. Her Benjamin, briefly, but mostly the one from this universe, the short-fused Sisko who shared this Jadzia’s bed. She wondered when that had happened, how soon after, and why. She wondered how deep their emotions ran, how much of it was displaced grief. After all, it was so much easier to fall into someone else’s bed than into their arms. Sex might be shallow, but after so much loss she couldn’t help wondering if it was better that way.

“I…” She stopped herself. What could she possibly say that wouldn’t sound pointless?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jadzia said. “But it wasn’t.”

Dax blinked. “What?”

“A mistake.” She bit her lip until the blood flowed. “It wasn’t a mistake. I loved her. Whatever I gave up, I gave up for her… for us.”

Dax shook her head, awestruck and a little disappointed. “You gave up everything,” she reminded her, wishing she could understand. “What’s going on inside you right now could kill you. You could die right here, just because you gave up the right to go back to Trill. You chose exile. You chose death, Jadzia. For you and your symbiont, you chose death. You have seven lifetimes of experience and wisdom inside you, and when you die, it’s gone. All of it. Gone.”

“I know that,” Jadzia said, very softly.

Dax ignored her. “And all for less than a year. Less than a year. You threw away seven lifetimes, and you didn’t even get one. You didn’t get anything.”

“You’re wrong,” Jadzia whispered. “We got everything.”

This time it was Dax who turned her face away, Dax who found herself suddenly overcome with emotion, Dax who struggled to keep her shoulders from shaking. In a sad sort of way, the tightness in her chest and the tremors in her hands actually felt kind of good; at the very least, it was a stark and pleasant contrast to the last few hours where she’d been unable to feel anything at all. The emotion itself wasn’t pleasant at all, but at least it gave her the comfort of knowing that she could still feel something, that she wasn’t entirely gone, that she wasn’t a lost cause. She still had a heart; it was still beating, and occasionally it let her feel pain. She took a couple of deep breaths, steadying herself, letting the unexpected swell of emotion remind her of who she was.

When she turned back, Jadzia was staring at her. Her eyes were wide and bright, sparkling with the tears she refused to shed. Was she thinking of her dead lover, Dax wondered, or of the sociopath who would drive her to insanity? Or, perhaps worst of all, was she thinking of them both?

Dax couldn’t deny that she herself had it so much easier. At the very least, she wasn’t lonely. When she’d been struck for the first time by Joran’s influence, she was surrounded by friends, compassionate and loving people who cared for her. When the anger started to manifest, even before she knew what it was, she had been in the company of people who would watch out for her, people who valued her highly enough that her lapses didn’t even make a dent in their friendships. Benjamin hadn’t even bothered to hear her apology, and even Kira — even the hot-headed Bajoran who took everything personally — hadn’t let Dax’s insults get to her. Even if neither of them could hope to understand what she was going through, they both knew her well enough to see that she wasn’t herself.

Dax couldn’t imagine being alone through that; as social and friendly as she was, most of the time she could scarcely imagine being alone at all.

This Jadzia, the one staring back at her with big wet eyes… she wasn’t really alone, not any more than Dax herself had been, but she was deeply lonely. Nobody in this place seemed to care very much about anyone else, not even the man who would hop between realities to find help. It was a hard universe full of hardened people, and compassion and empathy were luxuries that most could not afford. Even those in positions of power were too aware of the dangers of kindness, the risk of punishment for showing the least bit of decency to a soul in need. She remembered what had happened to Garak for daring to keep her secret, and how quick he’d been to do the Intendant’s bidding after that. She remembered, tasting bile, how readily he had stepped up to kill Keiko at her command, how he’d confessed to the deed without even blinking.

This place made people hard, or it killed them outright. There was nothing in between, and there was no alternative. To be damaged here, to be sick or hurt or weak, was to be utterly alone.

“You were right,” she heard herself murmur.

Jadzia blinked, and the sparkling moisture in her eyes vanished, water turned back to ice. “I usually am,” she said, a futile feint at humour after such a weighted confession.

“You were,” Dax went on, ignoring the remark. “You were right to ask what you have to look forward to. And you’re right to worry about it. The truth is, I am still going through the same thing you are. I am still struggling with it. Every day, every minute, every time I close my eyes, it’s right there inside of me, and I have to use everything I have just to hold it down. You were right about all of that. And you were right to look at me and be afraid of it.”

“I know I was,” Jadzia said, voice low but belligerent. “The only one you were fooling was yourself.”

Dax looked down, studying the container on the floor, the medicine that had cost so much. “It’s not… it’s not as simple as taking a drug or waking up some memories, or anything like that. There’s no cure, no quick fix, and it’s not going to miraculously get easier to deal with just because your isoboramine levels start going up or you start remembering why something scares you. It’s not going to make it go away, and it’s not going to make it easier. Once it’s in you, it’s there for good. You need to know what you’re getting into…” She thought of Benjamin again, and Kira, even of young sweet Julian. “…and you have to have a strong support network. You need to have people you can trust, people who can help you through this.”

“I have you,” Jadzia said, very quietly.

That stung, but Dax couldn’t say why. “I’m not enough,” she told her. “I’m not going to be here forever, and even if I was, you need more than one person. You can’t keep putting everything you are into one person’s hands. It’s just too much. I can’t… I can’t be everything for you, Jadzia. I can’t, and you can’t expect me to.”

“You’ve seen this place.” The bitterness in her voice was as sharp and serrated as her precious knife. “You’ve seen the way we’re living, and you know what we’re up against. You’ve seen where we’ve come from, what we’re fighting, and why. You know there’s no room for ‘support networks’ or ‘trust’ or any of that crap that comes so easy in your stupid universe. You know that this place isn’t like the one you’ve come from. It’s not…” She clenched her jaw until it went white, until those startling blue eyes were dark and damp over again. “It’s not good.”

“No.” Dax’s chest tightened as she tried not to think of Garak or the Intendant, or Keiko. “It’s definitely not good.”

Looking for a distraction, Jadzia hunched down to examine the container that Dax had risked so much to bring back for her. She snapped the case open and stared down at the vials within, neat little rows of perfectly measured doses, the benzocyatizine she needed so desperately just waiting to be administered.

She turned pale at the sight, spots standing out starkly against bone-white skin, and Dax almost reached out to steady her. For the first time, it seemed, she was struck by the seriousness of what was happening, as though she hadn’t really let herself think about it until now, until it was sitting there in front of her and she had no choice but to accept that it was real.

Dax wondered what she was thinking as she blanched and swallowed, wondered which of the countless risks was the most disturbing to her. Was she afraid for her symbiont, her _Dax_ , feeling the strain much more profoundly than Dax herself ever had? When it had been her turn, Dax at least had been secure in the knowledge that the symbiont at least would be safe; she was on Trill surrounded by doctors who wanted the same as she did: to keep the symbiont safe. Jadzia had none of those reassurances; did it frighten her to think of the risk to the symbiont she had already condemned to death? Or was she afraid for herself instead, afraid that her own life would be cut short? Dax doubted that; sometimes she seemed so weary of living.

Perhaps, then, it was the opposite. Perhaps she was afraid that this thing wouldn’t kill her at all, terrified instead that she would survive it after all, that she would be forced to live with this, to push through it, to survive it on her own. She was already struggling with so much, Dax knew, fighting too many enemies at once; would this be one too many? Was she more afraid at this point of living than of dying?

Touched and upset by the thought, Dax swung off the bed and moved to Jadzia’s side, standing over her with one hand resting on the back of her neck. The colour rose beneath her fingers, spreading to chase away a bit of that sickly pallor, and when she looked up from the container with questions in her eyes, it didn’t take too much of an effort for Dax to muster a smile, brave and strong for her sake.

“We don’t have to do this now,” she said gently, though she knew as well as Jadzia that it was a hollow offer.

“Yes, we do.” Dax had suspected she would say that; she would have said the same in her position, so eager to get the worst of it out of the way. “If we don’t start it now, then when? Tomorrow, or next week, or next year? Or maybe we should wait until I have a hallucination that kills someone? Would that be better? Or until I have one that kills me?” She laughed, bitter and cold, though Dax knew she wasn’t really angry with her specifically, just angry in general. “That would be great for you, wouldn’t it? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about it at all. You could just say ‘I tried’ and laugh it off and fly away back to your perfect little universe where you all hold hands and sing happy songs to each other.”

Dax sighed, and found herself wondering if she herself was so hyper-defensive, so abrasive when she felt threatened or cornered. Probably, she thought, and masked her self-deprecating smile before Jadzia had a chance to misinterpret it into something else.

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I just thought you might want a little time to prepare, that’s all.”

“No,” Jadzia snapped, sharp and cutting, like Dax had accused her of something awful. “No, I don’t want to ‘prepare’. I don’t want to ‘give it some time’ or ‘wait and see if it gets better on its own’.” Dax opened her mouth to point out that she hadn’t said any of that either, but Jadzia had no patience for her defences. “I just want to get this over with. I want these things to stop. I want to feel like myself again. I don’t want… I don’t…”

She trailed off, choked up, and for a moment Dax thought she was going to say _‘I don’t want to end up like you’_. There were tears in her eyes again, but when the ice in them turned to fire again, it wasn’t Dax she was looking at. She wasn’t really looking at anything, just sort of staring down at her hands, fingers spread open and palms facing upwards, staring down as though she didn’t recognise them.

Dax could feel the strain radiating out from her, the desperation and the urgency, and for the first time she wondered if there was something more to this than the idea that she wasn’t the ideal future. She crouched beside her, pulling her away from the half-forgotten container and into her arms, wrapping her up in an awkward hug, a gesture that said _‘it’s okay’_ and _‘I’m here’_ and so many other things that neither of them seemed able to put into words.

After a very, very long moment, Jadzia raised her head. The tears were gone, but her eyes were still more fire than ice, and her lower lip trembled as she gulped down a couple of deep breaths to compose herself.

“Are you with someone?” she asked after a moment, voice so low that Dax almost missed the question entirely. “I mean… are you sleeping with someone?”

Dax frowned, but didn’t ask why she wanted to know. “No,” she confessed, self-conscious and with the taste of poison in her mouth. “No, I’m not sleeping with anyone. Well, unless you count the Intendant.”

“I don’t,” Jadzia replied, very sharply. She didn’t seem happy to be reminded of that, and frankly Dax didn’t feel much better about having to remember it either. “I don’t care about the Intendant. I don’t care what happens to her. I wouldn’t care if I hallucinated her to hell and back again, or if I woke up in the middle of the night with my hands around her—”

“—throat,” Dax finished, half-choked.

Her stomach heaved, and her chest tightened so much that she thought her ribs might break. She thought she might pass out, or maybe vomit, but she did neither. Instead, far worse than either of those things, she remembered. She remembered it all, too well. The way the Intendant’s throat had yielded to the pressure of her fingers, the way it flexed every time she struggled to breathe. She remembered thinking how easy it would be to snap her neck, or else just cut off her breathing entirely, to watch and smile as she twitched her last, to relish the moment as she spluttered and died.

After everything that came after, she realised that some part of her wished she had done it. It would have ended so much suffering, if she’d just had the courage to end the Intendant instead. She remembered the excitement, the thrill, how wrong it had felt and how that wrongness had just ignited her even more. Even now, she felt herself growing hot and slick, turned on by the memory, the power and the strength, the intoxicating allure. Even now, she ached to go back and do it again. This time, she would finish the job, she thought, and smiled.

Jadzia raised her head. There were ghosts behind her eyes now, humanoid and familiar, and the sight of them brought Dax back to herself. She traced the curve of her jaw with her fingertips, not for Jadzia’s comfort but for her own, grounding and reminding herself of who she was and where she was, that she could not and would not go back there, that she was safe here, that she could not undo the Intendant’s terrible deeds even if she did kill her. The price was too high, she reminded herself, and waited for her loins to cool.

“This morning,” Jadzia murmured, a halting confession that Dax struggled to make sense of. “He… I…”

“He?” Dax echoed dumbly, then remembered that too. “Benjamin?”

Jadzia nodded. “He thought I was going to kill him. He thought… I thought…”

She held up her hands again, staring at them with the same pale-faced horror as before. Dax touched her face again, then her hair and the stuttering lines of her spots. She remembered the Intendant again, how good it had felt to be in control, how complete that control had been. She hadn’t been hallucinating then, hadn’t been dreaming or imagining anything. She had been there, in the moment, complete and whole.

“You were hallucinating,” she said aloud, seeing the difference in the ghosts behind Jadzia’s eyes. “You were hallucinating, and you…”

“…I tried to choke him,” Jadzia said.

Dax thought of the Intendant again, strangled and gasping, her life in Dax’s hands, how good it had felt and how terrible she had felt to feel so good. She wondered what Jadzia would say about that. “You weren’t in control of yourself,” she said aloud, as much a comfort for Jadzia as a torture for herself. “You were… you were hallucinating. You didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t… you weren’t…”

“I know.” Jadzia’s voice was tight, like she realised Dax wasn’t really talking to her at all. “I know what it was. But he was so… he…”

For the first time in what felt like a very long time, Dax was overwhelmed by the need to bite blood from her lip. She’d thought she had curbed that urge, had swallowed it down when she’d accepted some of what Joran wanted to make her. The anger came easier to her now, and controlling it came easier too. But hearing Jadzia talk of choking her lover, of hands around his throat, of pain and fear and desperation…

It all came screaming back to her. The Intendant, gasping and gagging, forcing out encouragement through a closed larynx, whispering terrible things, touching her with her words and then her hands, fingers driving deep inside her even as Dax’s left bruises on her neck. _Pleasure_. She’d said it over and over, and Dax felt it again now. Pain, pleasure, pain, _pleasure_. Why couldn’t she blame that on hallucinations too?

She bit down hard, and closed her eyes as blood flooded her tongue.

Jadzia was still talking when the haze in her head cleared. “He was angry,” she was saying, and though her voice was steady her hands were shaking. “He was angry, and yelling, and I… I wanted to apologise, but I just yelled right back.”

“Of course you did.” Dax’s own voice sounded very far away. “You were scared. Scared, and angry.”

That came from experience too. She remembered the sense of confusion, the fear that was her own and the anger that she couldn’t comprehend, Jadzia and Joran and neither of them quite fully formed, every part of herself discordant and remote, lost in that dazed moment of half-aware semiconsciousness. She still felt it sometimes now, when she woke from one of those dreams with blood in her mouth and hunger slavering in her mind. She wondered what Jadzia would say if she told her how much worse — better — _worse_ it was when it happened in the real world.

“That’s no excuse,” Jadzia was saying, oblivious to her inner thoughts. Dax struggled to concentrate. “I should’ve apologised. I should’ve tried to make it right. But he gets so angry, and that just makes me…”

Dax covered her hand. “It makes you angry too. I know.”

“I don’t want to hurt him,” Jadzia said with a heavy sigh. “He’s the only one in this sorry hellhole who gives a damn whether I live or die. He’s a scoundrel and a jackass, and a misogynist to boot… but he’s my scoundrel, dammit. He’s mine, and he cares, and in a place like this, that’s worth a hell of a lot.”

“I can believe that,” Dax said. Certainly, from her experience, compassion was a rare enough thing; it was little wonder Jadzia wanted to hold onto it with both hands.

“It is,” Jadzia pressed, earnest. “It’s worth more than anything you can imagine. It’s rare and it’s precious, and I… I don’t want to throw it away. That misogynistic scoundrel is all I have left, and I don’t want to hurt him.” She sighed again, then mustered a watery chuckle. “Well, not unless it’s on my own terms, anyway. You have to admit, sometimes he kind of asks for it.”

“Sometimes,” Dax agreed hazily.

Truth be told, it wasn’t nearly so easy to relate as she wanted it to be. Jadzia’s kind of panic, that raw and visceral fear of hurting someone she cared about, felt very distant to her now. Terok Nor had changed her far more than Joran ever could have. It had made her harder, a little more like the people of this universe, rougher and less sympathetic. The Intendant had gorged her on hate; she’d made her feel like that hatred was justified, made her feel like Joran might have a point with all the sadism inside of him, made her take pleasure in pain and relish suffering. Some people deserved to be hurt; it was a frightening thought, even now, but every time that fear took its hold, she remembered Keiko and Garak, and felt her spine straighten, defiant and deadly. The Intendant had made her harder than Joran could ever dream of.

Jadzia was right, she realised again, though not in the way she’d thought. It was true, she was still going through it, still suffering the same lapses she’d felt when she didn’t know who Joran was or why she was so angry, but that wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t even really hers. It was this place, this dark and twisted universe and all the terrible things in it. This place was poisoning her, far more efficiently than Joran ever could, and reshaping her into something even darker than he was, something that could justify the urge to hurt, the urge to kill.

Joran killed for the joy of it; he was the reason she felt pleasure when she thought of doing the same. But he wasn’t the one telling her it was right. He wasn’t the one making her wish she could have dug her fingers in a little tighter and cut off the Intendant’s breathing for good. He’d just told her to enjoy it for what it was. She was the one who wanted her dead, the one who thought of Keiko and believed it would be right.

Suddenly, she didn’t want to tell Jadzia that she would get over this, that one day she would be able to curb the urge to hurt, that one day she would temper the anger, silence the hatred, and quiet the hallucinations. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was wrap her up her arms and tell her that it was all right to hurt people sometimes, if they did enough to deserve it.

That was all wrong, she knew, though it didn’t quiet the urge. It was all wrong, all backwards. It wasn’t who she was or what she stood for, and it wasn’t why she had come here in the first place. Even Curzon balked at the idea, and the part of her that was still just Jadzia — the little girl without a symbiont — was upset and ashamed of herself.

Beneath her fingers, she felt Jadzia’s turned to stone, the stiffening of someone who had made a decision.

“The hell with it,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “Let’s get on with this.”

Dax didn’t resist as she pulled away, snapping the case open again and pulling out one of the vials. What little light there was bounced off the glass as she held it up for examination, and Dax lost herself for a moment in the gleam of the surface. Even the medicine cast a reflection here, she thought, and shivered.

Jadzia quirked a brow, but didn’t comment; she just shrugged and handed the vial over, eyes big and bright with anticipation, like she expected Dax to somehow know what to do with it. She was looking at her like she was a doctor, like she knew everything there was to know about her condition, about benzocyatizine and isoboramine and the inner workings of symbionts and their hosts, like she expected her to know as much as a whole hospital full of Trill experts just because she’d spent some time under their care. She seemed to think that Dax knew everything, and it was only as she took the vial with fingers gone limp with utter terror that she realised she actually didn’t know anything.

“Jadzia,” she started, flinching at how pitchy she sounded, how suddenly fearful. “Don’t you think we should get a doctor to administer…”

“Of course we should,” Jadzia shot back, irritable and impatient. “But unless you smuggled one back from Terok Nor, that’s not going to happen.” Dax opened her mouth to respond, but Jadzia silenced her with a sharp glare. “Look, if I ever meet a doctor, I’ll be sure to ask him the proper benzocyatic dosage for a Trill with low isoboramine levels. But in case you’ve neglected to notice, this little ‘rebellion’ thing is run by Terrans. And Terrans don’t become doctors.”

“They do where I come from,” Dax said, thinking of Julian with an ache in her heart.

Jadzia’s glare turned even harder; she was clearly using every ounce of self-restraint she had to keep from slapping her. If she was honest, Dax rather supposed she deserved it. In spite of everything she’d been through since she’d got here, in spite of everything she’d seen and done and suffered, she was still just a pampered child from a privileged universe.

“I don’t care how they do it where you come from,” Jadzia snapped. “We’re not in your universe now, in case you failed to notice that too. We’re in mine, and all I care about is making the most out of what we have here.” The anger was still there in her eyes, but it was flashing just a little less brightly, tempered by something like faith. “And what we have is you. That’s all. Just you.”

“That’s not much,” Dax said, looking down at the vial.

“It’s enough,” Jadzia said, and Dax saw the echo of Kira’s earnestness blazing behind her eyes. _Faith_ , she thought again. “I trust you, okay? A whole lot more than I trust me right now, so…”

“That’s wrong for a start,” Dax said, cutting her off with a sober look. “If you don’t trust yourself, this will be a complete waste of time. You can trust me all you want, but you have to trust yourself too. You’re the one who’s going to be dealing with this, not me. Not…”

She trailed off, looking back down at the vial, weighing it in her hands. She tried to imagine the chemical composition of the medicine within, channelling her inner scientist, the tiny little speck of insight that she had brought to the Dax symbiont and probably the only thing she would be remembered for when it moved on to a new host. The vial felt very small and very fragile, like the slightest wrong move would be enough to shatter the glass, spilling its contents onto the floor, lost and wasted, and with them any hope for Jadzia’s recovery, like that lone vial was all she’d got, like there weren’t a case full of others just waiting to be used.

Holding it, she felt suddenly overburdened, like it wasn’t just a vial of benzocyatizine in her hands but Jadzia’s life as well. Those hands started to shake as she thought about it, trembling as she found herself remembering her mistakes on Terok Nor, the damage they had caused and the life they’d made forfeit.

It was a bad time to think of Keiko, the worst time, but once the thought was planted she couldn’t stop it, and for a second or two she was right back there watching her die all over again, unsure of whether it was a dream or the reality she was reliving, heat and sweat and screams. Her hands shook harder, and the rest of her limbs too, shuddering under the sudden explosion of panic and pain, memories and imagination brutal and ruthless inside her head.

She saw it all, everything, all over again. A bruised and beaten Garak, a Garak who had no choice but to do as he was told; _“once bitten, twice bitter”_ , he’d said with a wry smile, and so he was. It was her fault that he’d shied away from honour, her fault that he’d chosen obedience and slaughter, her fault that he would never do the right thing again. Her fault that Keiko would never draw breath, her fault that she would never become a botanist or a teacher or a mother. Her fault…

She remembered the way her legs had gone out from under her when he told her, the way she’d collapsed, the way she’d lost control of her body, her mind, every part of her. She remembered the way he’d tried to salvage her, too, the way he’d bundled her onto her ship because she could no longer stand under her own power. She remembered the journey back to the Badlands, vague and indistinct, remembered how she couldn’t feel, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything.

She felt that way again now, numb and shocked, hollowed out, so close to broken, so close to breaking, so close to—

“Jadzia!”

It was a very long moment before she remembered that that was her name too, that she was Jadzia as much as she was Dax, that the voice shouting her name was calling for her, not the other one. She bolted upright, dazed and dizzy, and squinted as she remembered where she was.

“What’s the matter with you?”

She blinked again, looking down, trying to place what had happened. And then she saw the vial, smashed to pieces on the cold floor, shattered and spilled just like she’d been afraid of, glass and liquid spreading uselessly out across the dirt, lost and wasted. She’d known this would happen, she realised dumbly; she had anticipated that it would, had expected it, foreseen it, and still she hadn’t been able to prevent it.

 _Another stupid mistake,_ she thought, and wished that her hands would stop shaking just for a second or two. Hadn’t they done enough damage already?

“What’s the matter with you?” Jadzia shouted again. She was shaking her now, angry, though the worry undercutting her irritation was palpable. “You risked your neck to get me that stuff and now you’re just throwing it on the floor?”

“It was an accident,” Dax said weakly, clenching her fists. Why wouldn’t they stop shaking? “It was a…”

“…mistake.”

They both sighed at that, in perfect tandem. Jadzia still looked frustrated, but her expression had softened now, as though she could hear in that one word everything that Dax couldn’t say, all the horrors that still haunted her, the shock and the sorrow that still hummed like electricity through her system. She studied her for a long moment, as though trying to figure out the best tack to take. Subtly, she pushed away the container that still held the remaining benzocyatizine vials, and Dax was grateful for that; she didn’t want to look at the damned thing until she had to.

For her part, Dax kept her eyes on her hands, threading her fingers together and trying to hold them still, trying to hold every part of her still. She was shaking all through now, and though she tried to make the spasms subtle, she could tell that Jadzia could see them. Of course she could; hadn’t Dax been able to see everything she’d tried to hide too? Weren’t they the same person? If anyone could see the tremors in her, even when she was hiding them, of course it was herself.

“Are you sure the Intendant didn’t do something to you?” Jadzia asked at last, voice thick with concern.

Dax swallowed; it felt like the walls were closing in all around her. Was she going into shock again? Hadn’t she only just come out of it? She couldn’t afford to go back there, couldn’t afford to lose herself again in that soundless and soulless place, not when she was finally remembering what it was to feel. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

“I’m sure,” she said aloud, astonished and impressed by how steady her voice sounded. “She didn’t do anything to me.”

Jadzia wasn’t convinced. “But something happened, didn’t it? You’re not the same person who left a week ago.”

That was news to Dax, and she blinked her confusion. “A week?” She wasn’t sure whether she was surprised by how long it had been, or how short. “Has it been a week?”

“Well, maybe not quite that long, but…” She trailed off, eyes hardening. “What happened over there?”

Dax opened her mouth to answer, even to be honest if that was what it took, but the words wouldn’t come. Part of her wanted to say it, wanted to admit the truth out loud, to say the words and hear them spoken by her own tongue just as she’d needed to hear them spoken by Garak’s. She wanted to say _‘Keiko’_ and _‘O’Brien’_ , to remind herself that they were all such different people here, that the Keiko who was dead had never met Miles O’Brien, that the man named Smiley never smiled, that they both bore names name that didn’t fit their mouths.

She wanted Jadzia to hear it too. She wanted to remind her of all the things she knew, all the truths she couldn’t process, all the things she’d denied or hidden from, all the reasons she was here, all the reasons she was sharing Sisko’s bed instead of the Intendant’s. She wanted Jadzia to hold her, to pull her close and wrap her up in her own arms, to make her see that it wasn’t her friend who was dead, that nobody in this universe was her friend, that this universe didn’t have friends, that the only person she could trust was herself.

None of that would come, though. Not even just the name. It was just two syllables, two small and stupid syllables, a name she’d said more times than she could count. But she couldn’t say it now. She couldn’t make it real; if she made the name real, then the rest of it would be real too, the mistake and the death and the blame, the terrible truth that her broken brain couldn’t process, the fact that it was all her fault.

Her hands were still shaking, so she occupied them by reaching for another vial of benzocyatizine. The cool glass calmed her this time, steadied her hands and kept them strong, supplanting memories of Keiko’s face with memories of wasted medicine bleeding through the dirt floor. She’d be better this time, she promised herself. For Jadzia, still looking at her like she was the only hope for this entire universe. For Jadzia the weak, Dax would be strong.

Gathering what little fortitude she still had, she straightened her spine. Turned back to Jadzia, a fresh vial in her hand, as steady as anything she’d ever held. She could break down in her own time, she decided. She could confess and cry, could grieve and mourn and suffer for the terrible things she’d seen and done, could lose herself to memories of Terok Nor when she was the only one there. Or better yet, when she was safely back home, when the tidal wave of shock and trauma was drowned out by familiarity and friendship, by Julian’s empathy and Benjamin’s smile and Kira’s faith. She could be weak when she was home; right now, she was here for Jadzia, for a Dax who didn’t have anyone else. This wasn’t her moment, it was Jadzia’s, and Dax would not allow her mistakes to cost either of them more than they already had.

Jadzia touched her arm, murmuring that damned name. “ _Jadzia_ ,” like that was supposed to mean something more than the face staring back at her with ice-blue eyes, like they really were the same shy little girl. Belatedly, and more than a little hazily, Dax realised that she was still waiting for an answer, that she was still hoping for some kind of insight. She smiled, feeling the confidence stretch the skin on her face, unnaturally warm, body gone taut with resolve, with the determination to be what Jadzia needed, not what Dax did.

“Nothing happened,” she said, in a voice as steady as her hand as she reached for Jadzia’s neck. “Now, hold still.”


	24. Chapter 24

Administering benzocyatizine, it turned out, wasn’t so hard.

Jadzia provided her with a tricorder, or at least whatever passed for one in this universe, modified for their purposes by their O’Brien, the surly tinkerer they’d ironically styled ‘Smiley’. When Jadzia mentioned that he was responsible for fixing up the tricorder, Dax had almost dropped the vial she was holding; she’d found herself needing to set it down as quickly and inconspicuously as she could for fear that her hands would start shaking all over again, and was grateful beyond words when Jadzia didn’t notice the horror on her face. It was still a hard thing to suffer through, even just the sound of his name. _O’Brien_ , and the walls started to close in around her.

Desperately clinging to less painful thoughts, she willed herself to think of Julian Bashir instead, the angry young man of this universe and the bright-eyed optimist of her own. This universe’s Bashir wouldn’t even know one end of a hypospray from another, but her Julian was another story entirely. She mustered a smile as she thought of him, imagining the horror on his face if he could see her now. He would have a heart attack if he found out she was playing doctor, and if he thought for a second that she was administering any kind of medication without supervision, he would have crossed universes himself just to slap the hypo out of her hand.

She couldn’t help laughing a little at the thought of that. Julian was the most idealistic young man Dax had met in a very long time, but when it came to the harsh reality of the ‘frontier medicine’ that he talked about with such passion, he was still just as much a high-brow professional as any other doctor she’d ever met. He was so confident, so secure in his certainty that anyone handling a hypospray must naturally have all the proper medical training, he couldn’t fathom the idea of a wilderness so remote that its people had no choice but to survive with the little or nothing they had.

For her part, Dax was only marginally more functional than they were; she had the benefit of quick thinking and eight lifetimes, but she was no more of a doctor than the short-fused Julian Bashir of this universe, the angry young man who would sooner make threats than friends. She had no doubt that her Julian would be beyond furious if he found out what she was doing, but since she had no choice, she forced herself to focus on the positives instead. She was a scientist, if not a doctor, with at least a basic grounding in biology and chemistry, a rudimentary understanding of the biochemical connections between symbiont and host, and a painfully intimate knowledge of what Jadzia was going through. She was as well-informed in this as anyone Jadzia could hope for, and that bolstered her courage.

Still, though, she felt nervous. She squeezed Jadzia’s hand a little more tightly than she should have, tight enough that she was sure it must hurt as she checked the tricorder readings for the hundredth time, watching her isoboramine levels as they fluctuated in the red on one side of the tiny screen, while the hypo’s dosage flashed in clear numbers on the other. It should have been reassuring, comforting, the little tricorder telling her in no uncertain terms what she was about to do and predicting the effects to the best of its ability. It was a welcome, if meagre, substitute for the Julian Bashir she missed so much, though it didn’t do much to calm the unease.

Jadzia sucked in her breath when Dax pressed the cold hypo to her neck, and Dax saw the same nervousness reflected in her eyes, just as uneasy but somehow a little softer. There was fear there, too, but it was cool, almost closer to anticipation. Dax looked away, and wondered not for the first time how unbearable things must have become for her, that she would so readily accept medical treatment from someone whose only qualification to administer it was _‘well, I’m you’_. How frightened she must be, how hopeless — or perhaps simply how stupid — to trust Dax so unconditionally.

“I’m sorry,” Dax murmured as she injected the drug, flinching far more than Jadzia at the familiar hiss. “I’m sorry it’s so painful for you.”

Jadzia closed her eyes for a moment, swallowed a lungful of air. She looked almost reverent, like she was waiting for something to happen, like she thought there was some kind of miracle inside that hypo, a magic spell or a potion that would make everything better. She really didn’t know the first thing about it, Dax realised sadly. Of course that wasn’t going to happen; if Jadzia truly thought she would be completely healed by a couple of benzocyatic injections, she was in for a rude awakening indeed. Still, though, Dax didn’t say that out loud. What good would it do either of them to pave over hope with honesty?

Right now, she was just hoping that Jadzia wouldn’t go the same way she had. The benzocyatic regimen they’d put her on had worked for a short while, but even that hadn’t stopped the hallucinations completely. Not that it had mattered in the end, of course; her tangled-up memories had overpowered the drug inside of her as soon as she’d caught sight of Joran’s face. She couldn’t remember very much about the moment itself, only coming around hours later to be told that she had a choice to make, but the fear clenched inside her like a fist around her heart, now even more than it had then, and as she looked at Jadzia, she found that she was bracing for the worst. Neural shock wasn’t quite so easy to recover from as a few disturbing hallucinations, she thought miserably.

There was nothing she could do but wait and see, but that didn’t stop her keeping the tricorder locked on Jadzia’s life-signs, scanning incessantly until her arm began to ache.

The scientist in her knew that it would pay off far more to keep her attention on Jadzia, that her eyes could tell her far more than the readouts would. Julian told her all the time that it was better to watch the patient than the scanners (though in truth, he was as much a victim of tricorder dependance as anyone she’d ever met), and she supposed that there was some sense to that. Besides, she knew the signs and symptoms better than anyone, didn’t she? Not that it mattered, really; there was no room for common sense in her head just then and she couldn’t bear the thought of looking at Jadzia’s face. She felt too connected, too linked; it was too much like looking into a mirror, and she couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her own fear reflected back from behind her own eyes. No, she thought with a shudder; effective or not, it was safer to watch the tricorder.

“Well?” Jadzia demanded after a few minutes; she was just as impatient as Dax had been when it was her turn, and she almost smiled.

“Well what?” she shot back, keeping her features sober and her tone light. “This isn’t an instant cure, you know. It’s a treatment. You’re supposed to—”

“I know what a treatment is,” Jadzia snapped. “I might not be a scientist like you, but I’m not an idiot either. I had to work my ass off to get joined, just like you did.”

“I’d never accuse you of being an idiot,” Dax replied evenly. “You’re just impatient. You want results, and you want to know what’s going on inside you. I understand that. But I’m not an expert, and all I have to go on is my own experience.” She studied the tricorder again, tracing the tiny readouts with the edge of one finger, fighting back a shudder as she remembered. “It’s probably going to take a little trial-and-error to get the dosage right, and I’d rather go too slow than too fast. If your levels go up too quickly, it might trigger another—”

“No!” Jadzia blurted out, and Dax looked up in surprise at the sharpness of her tone, the hitch in her breath. She was clearly fighting to keep her voice from cracking, and the terror in her face cut Dax to the bone. “No more hallucinations. I don’t care if it takes ten times as long. _No more hallucinations_. Do you hear me?”

Dax sighed, sympathetic but just a little frustrated. “I can’t promise you that. I’m sorry, but I can’t. These treatments aren’t… I mean, even if I did know what I was doing, there wouldn’t be any guarantee…”

She tried to think of a diplomatic way of putting it, a tactful way of explaining that nothing was certain here. She didn’t want to have to say the words, to sit Jadzia down and explain that these treatments hadn’t been enough to save her at all, that in the end they’d only made things worse. She didn’t want to have to say the words ‘neural shock’, to go back there and think about how she’d almost died. Hazy as those memories were, they still frightened her. Just one more in a long line of things she hadn’t ever really come to terms with, she supposed, but this wasn’t about her. It was about Jadzia, and Jadzia couldn’t know any of that.

“Look,” she went on, as gently as she could. “I can’t promise there won’t be any more hallucinations. But I can promise you that I’ll be right here if there are. Okay?”

She felt Jadzia go tense and rigid beside her, and forced herself to glance up from the tricorder. It broke her heart to see her looking so frightened, so helpless, and Dax shuffled closer, leaving the tricorder abandoned on the floor without a second thought. She took her hands again, squeezed tight, and looked right into her eyes. Jadzia’s were wide and bright, hopeful and frightened at the same time, and Dax willed her own to go hard and strong, iron on ice, willing Jadzia to draw strength from her, from the confidence that she’d been trained all her life to exude on cue, whether she felt it or not.

“I’ll be right here,” she said again.

Jadzia nodded, biting down on her lip, hard enough that Dax winced with sympathetic pain. She recognised the way her eyes went even wider, relief surging in to swallow the fear if only for a moment as she braced against the taste of blood. “You’d better be,” she muttered.

“I will,” Dax promised, squeezing her hands a little tighter.

The light dimmed behind her eyes as she released her lip, and Dax found herself wondering what she was feeling. Did the fear overpower everything else, or was she still struggling against the anger like Dax had been, even when she was at her most frightened? Terror and rage made for a potent combination, and a deeply unpleasant one, and Dax remembered all too well how she’d felt in the throes of both; she had only suffered a few hallucinations, and only two that she remembered in any kind of detail. The third one had dissolved almost entirely, lost to the disoriented dissociation of neural shock, though she doubted it would have been any less horrifying.

The two that she did remember were unpleasant enough; if she was completely honest about it, Dax would probably rank them among the worst experiences of her life. Certainly it was the most horrifying thing that young Jadzia had been through, but even the long-lived symbiont struggled to remember anything much worse. The only thing she could think of now, off the top of her head, was Torias’s shuttle accident; Curzon and Jadzia had both had recurring dreams of that moment, night terrors that endured for weeks after they were first joined. But even that wasn’t the same as those hallucinations, the visceral panic and the pulsing throb of fury.

She tried to shake off the discomfort, pasted on a cocksure smile, willed Jadzia to believe that she wasn’t afraid, that she was calm and composed, that she believed in them both. How could she expect Jadzia to believe in her when she didn’t believe in herself?

After a long moment of strained quiet, Jadzia took a deep breath. She looked pale, Dax noticed, and hoped that was a product of the fear and not the medicine.

“I don’t like feeling helpless,” she murmured at last. “I don’t like feeling like I can’t control myself. There’s already too much in this damned universe I can’t control, and I…” Her eyes glazed over, damp and distant, and Dax felt a lump catch in her throat, feeling a flicker shared sorrow. “I have to be able to control myself. It’s all I have left. It’s the only thing I have. There’s nothing else. _Nothing_. Do you know what that’s like?”

Dax looked away. “I know,” she said.

At least on some level, she supposed she did. Her own hallucinations had left her frightened, shaken and deeply disturbed, and she remembered all too well the sense of being out of control. She’d felt like she’d been torn apart, her mind saying one thing and her body doing another, anger and fear clashing against each other, both feeling like Dax but neither really feeling like _her_. She’d been confused and dizzy, unable to make sense of her own body, her own mind, her own self. Most of all, she had felt helpless, completely and utterly, in a way that she had never felt before. She had died six times, but even death hadn’t felt so utterly uncontrolled as those damned hallucinations.

But she also remembered strong hands on her shoulders, calming voices of welcome friends, familiar surroundings and feeling safe. She remembered Quark reaching out to steady her as she stumbled out of the first hallucination, surprisingly supportive for the self-serving Ferengi; she remembered the look on his face as he’d caught her arms, the depth of concern, not quite rich enough to cover up his usual leering, but certainly enough to make it clear that he cared.

She remembered Julian, too, the way he held her after the second one; she remembered how unexpected the whole thing had been, how terrifying and unnerving. She had felt utterly helpless, frustrated and angry — _“they said the treatment was working! why isn’t it working?”_ — and how effortlessly Julian had calmed her, holding her arms and helping her to breathe through the panic as it crashed over her in unending waves. He’d known almost before she did that it would happen, and she remembered how comforted she’d felt by his presence, his strength. She had never been one to depend on someone else’s strength when she had her own, but it had fortified what little she had to look into Julian’s eyes and see that they were clear. He had known exactly what to do, how to calm her down, and he had stood with her for as long as it had taken for her to regain some fragment of herself.

She had lost control too, just like Jadzia, but she hadn’t had to deal with it alone. She was never alone, and she decided once again that Jadzia would not be alone either.

“You know…” she mused, almost to herself. “It’s possible that they might never go away completely. I can’t say for sure that they will.” _For either of us,_ she thought, but did not say it. “So if you’re… if you’re hoping to wake up one day and never have to deal with any of this ever again, I’m afraid it’s not going to happen.

Jadzia flinched at that, but Dax couldn’t make out whether she was responding to the words or to the assumption that she needed to hear them. “I know that,” she said sullenly.

“I’m sure you do,” Dax replied soberly. “But it won’t hurt to hear it again. I had all the resources on Trill. I had the entire Symbiosis Commission working on me, and even they couldn’t fix me completely. It’s been weeks, and I still don’t feel entirely like myself. Some days, I don’t feel like myself at all. It’s like there’s an infection in my blood, a fever burning under my skin, but I can’t sweat it out. I still see things and hear things and think things that don’t feel right. I still have urges and instincts I don’t want. I still have feelings so perverted that they make me nauseous. And I still have dreams.”

“Hallucinations,” Jadzia said.

“ _Dreams_ ,” Dax corrected. “There’s a difference. And believe me, they are easier. But that doesn’t mean they’re easy. They’re there, and they frighten me. For all I know, they’ll always be there. For all I know, they’ll never stop frightening me.” She took a breath, braced herself to admit something she hadn’t wanted to think about. “Jadzia… no joined Trill has ever gone through this. What they did to us… there’s no precedent for it. Even the doctors at the Symbiosis Commission don’t really know how long it will affect us, or how badly, or even in what way. They don’t know anything. And if they don’t know…”

“…what chance do we have?” Jadzia growled, moody and impatient. “You’re just full of good news, aren’t you? Don’t you have anything useful to tell me?”

“Not really.” Dax shrugged. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know the first thing about any of this. If Julian was here instead of me, maybe he’d be able to throw out some medical technobabble to make it sound less scary. Doctors always make things sound simpler, even when they don’t know anything. Julian’s really good at that.” In spite of everything, she found herself smiling, a flash of nostalgia that dissipated as quickly as it had arrived. “But he’s not here. You just have me. And as much as it pains me to admit it, I’m no more of a doctor than that bad-tempered Bashir substitute of yours.”

Jadzia smiled too, with the same kind of fondness that Dax felt in her own heart. “Julian has other talents,” she said with a strange edge to her voice. “I’m sure you do too.”

“I have plenty of talents,” Dax agreed, then blushed as Jadzia quirked a scandalised eyebrow. “But I don’t see how any of them will help you.”

For a moment, Jadzia looked very serious. There was none of the usual belligerence in the way she frowned, none of the Joran-channelling aggression, but a sober kind of sincerity, something that struck the same place in Dax’s heart that beat sweetly with thoughts of Julian. When she spoke, choosing her words very carefully, her voice was shaking almost as hard as her hands.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re helping me just by being here?”

Dax didn’t know how to respond to that. “All I have is my experience,” she said softly, “and most of that is hazy at best. I really don’t see how that’s helpful.”

“Of course you don’t,” Jadzia said. “You don’t see anything, do you?”

Maybe that was true, but Dax had no intention of admitting it even if it was. She didn’t like being told she didn’t understand something, no matter how valid the claim, and it didn’t come any more easily from Jadzia than it would have done from anyone else. She supposed it was one of the downsides of being joined, the stubborn refusal to accept that someone else might know better than she did. So, instead of acknowledging that Jadzia might have a point, she just rolled her eyes and scowled.

Jadzia chuckled, then looked away, chewing on her lip with a quiet kind of thoughtfulness. “You really don’t understand at all, do you?” she asked. “You have no idea how it feels to be alone. You have no idea how it feels to be sick and scared and completely alone, even in a room full of people you care about. You have no idea what it’s like to know that something’s wrong, that something horrible is happening inside of you, and the only thing your so-called lover has to say about it is _‘not now’_ or _‘it can wait’_ or _‘I’m busy’_.”

That cut, sharp and deep. She was right, Dax thought sadly; as hard as she tried, she could not imagine that kind of isolation. “No,” she affirmed softly. “I don’t know what that’s like.”

Jadzia still couldn’t bring herself to look at her, and Dax didn’t push her to. “The only person in this whole damn universe who might have possibly understood any of this is dead. She died and left me alone, and I… I thought, _well, that’s it, isn’t it?_ That’s what I’d signed up for. And I thought I was okay with that. We both knew the risks, and we knew that one day one of us would be alone. But it’s… it’s different. Knowing something, accepting it, paying the price… and then having to live it. It’s so different. It’s so lonely. Even with Benjamin to warm my bed and my heart and whatever else needs warming, it’s still so lonely. It’s so…”

“…lonely,” Dax echoed, not because she had the least idea what it felt like, but because Jadzia seemed to want to hear her voice, to hear some kind of encouragement.

Though she knew Jadzia must see the hollowness of her agreement, must realise it was only for her sake, it still felt deceptive to say it, to let her believe even delusively that she had any idea how it felt. Dax had the privilege of a good life, a steady upbringing and a universe that wasn’t tearing itself apart. She had the luxury of surrounding herself with people who cared about her, people she could care about in turn. She had the freedom to choose the company she kept, to make her friends and shape from them the second family that she had wrapped around herself in the absence of her real one. She was away from Trill, too, but it was with the knowledge that she could go back. Idly, she wondered if she would have been so reluctant to go back there if she’d thought she never would again.

But then, even if she couldn’t, she still had her friends. She still had the second family on Deep Space Nine, Benjamin and Julian and Nerys, the love that had kept her so much stronger than all the benzocyatizine the Symbiosis Commission had to offer. Maybe that was another gift she’d inherited from Curzon, because she felt that same blood-deep kinship with her friends that he had always felt with his, the synchronous heartbeat that she shared with with Benjamin Sisko was almost a perfect time-touched echo of Curzon’s. The depth of her feelings for Kira, the way Julian bolstered her strength, all those late-night tongo sessions with Quark… they felt like home as much as any trip to Trill.

She couldn’t fathom living like this Jadzia, being so isolated, so alone even when she was surrounded, sharing her thoughts and her life and even her bed but never truly feeling intimacy, keeping company without keeping kinship. She couldn’t make sense of it, and she prayed that she would never have to. 

Dax led with her heart. She had for as long as she could remember, so far back that she honestly couldn’t tell where in the soup of her various personalities it had started. For all she knew, it pre-dated even Lela; it was so deeply ingrained, it wouldn’t surprise her to learn that it had begun way back in the symbiont pools on Trill, inside the slow-developing consciousness of the baby Dax, the embryonic creature that would grow to become the link connecting all those hosts together. Wherever it had started, it had been fundamental within her for as long as she knew, one of the strongest guiding forces of all the Dax influences, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She didn’t want to live in a world like this. Living at all was difficult enough sometimes, and unimaginably confusing to a mind swamped with past lives and conflicted memories. But to live out here in this cruel and cold universe, a universe where friendship only went as far as the first person who wouldn’t beat her half to death, where a lover was only worth as much as his lovemaking, where a moment of real love was snuffed out before it had a chance to blossom? It was hard enough to live in a universe that was fair; the more time Dax spent in this one, the more she realised that it would be than she could do to live here at all.

The depth of Jadzia’s loss struck her again now, even harder than before. This time, Dax let herself think of something more than exile, something more than all the things Jadzia had given up. For once, she let herself imagine that fleeting thing, that pure and honest love that had been worth the price of exile, and how Jadzia must feel now to fight this thing without the one person who would have understood.

Even if she couldn’t truly know what it was like, Nilani would understand. Even if she didn’t know what to do, she would be there to hold Jadzia’s hand when she needed comfort, to hold her down when she hallucinated, hold her hair back when it all overwhelmed her, and hold her upright when she couldn’t support herself. Nilani, or whoever the Kahn symbiont had evolved into, would know, at least on a rudimentary level, how to deal with this. She would know how to deal with Jadzia, at the very least, and she would care enough to do it, no matter what.

Dax couldn’t help but wonder if that would have been enough. Jadzia was so lonely, so frustrated; would she have been happier letting the hallucinations claim her, letting them drag her down to her grave, if it meant that she would die in the arms of the woman she loved? Would she have surrendered willingly if it meant she wasn’t the one left alone and afraid, cold and helpless in the bed of a lover who barely even passed as a friend?

“It’s lonely,” Jadzia said again, almost to herself, and Dax was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to hug her. “It’s so lonely…”

“I know,” Dax said.

Jadzia didn’t seem to hear her. “I thought… I thought I was prepared. I knew what it meant. I knew the risks, I knew the price, I knew everything. I really, really thought I was prepared. And I… dammit, I _was_ prepared. I was prepared to hurt. I was prepared to die. I was prepared… I… I was prepared to lie in agony for days if I had to, even feel the symbiont dying inside me before I went. If that was what it took to be with her, if that was what I had to do…” Her voice cracked. “I was prepared. I was prepared to die.” Dax touched the back of her hand, felt her fingers twitch, and let Jadzia rush on. “But this isn’t dying, is it? Those damn hallucinations… that’s not dying. It’s not dying, and it’s not fair.”

“It’s not fair,” Dax agreed, and had never meant anything more.

Jadzia choked on her breath. “It’s just… it feels like I’m going crazy. It feels like dying, but it’s not. It’s not. And I wasn’t… I wasn’t prepared for that. I was prepared to die, but I wasn’t prepared to go crazy. And I wasn’t prepared to have to do it without her. That wasn’t… it wasn’t… this wasn’t part of the plan.”

She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and Dax closed hers in empathy. “Curzon always used to say—”

“— _‘planning is for idealists and idiots’_.” She smiled, very faintly, then turned inwards once more. “So I’m an idealist. Or an idiot. Hell, maybe I’m both. Because this… this wasn’t planned. This wasn’t…” She shook her head. “They ate me alive. They tore me apart, but they left me alive. They didn’t even have the decency to let me die.”

“Jadzia…”

“No. You don’t understand. Okay? You can’t understand what it’s like to go through that in a place like this. I wasn’t hurt, and I wasn’t dead… so what the hell was I supposed to do? How the hell was I supposed to…” She swallowed, forcing something back, though whether it was on a sob or a scream, Dax couldn’t tell. “I was healthy. At least physically, I was healthy. And that meant I was fine. Of course I was fine. It was all in my head. Wasn’t it? It was all in my damn head!”

She laughed, half-crazed, and Dax inched back a little. “You know it’s not that simple.”

“Of course I know that. And you know it too. You’ve been there. But how do you explain it to a cave full of Terrans? How do you explain that something’s wrong with you when all they can see is that you’re healthy and you’re fine? How do you make them see that it’s not just all in your head when you’re not even sure about it yourself?” She choked again, biting down harder on her lip. “I felt like I was losing myself, like… like I was going crazy. And nobody cared because I could still stand on my feet. Like that was all that mattered. Like that’s the only way of measuring if someone’s sick. And I didn’t… I didn’t…”

“You didn’t know how to explain it. You couldn’t make them understand, because you didn’t understand it either.”

“They didn’t want to hear it. Even if I could’ve tried to make them understand, they didn’t want to know. They didn’t care. Because… because…” Her voice dropped then, turning low and gravelly and very bitter, and Dax could tell that the words that came next were supposed to be Sisko’s. “Because we’re fighting a goddamn _war_ , and we don’t have time for your goddamn Trill _drama_.”

Dax swallowed hard, suddenly emotional. She couldn’t imagine hearing those words from her Benjamin Sisko, couldn’t imagine seeing the face she knew so well twisted and contorted into something impatient, something cold and calloused, something that didn’t care.

“I’m so sorry,” she managed, though it didn’t feel like it was enough.

“Don’t be sorry,” Jadzia snapped. “Because that idiot… that damned idiot Benjamin… he went out there, didn’t he? He went out there, and he got you. He crossed over to a different universe just to get you here for me.” She shook her head, as though she still couldn’t believe it. “And I know it’s not because he understood, or even because he really cared. I know it’s just because he was scared I might do something stupid, something dangerous, or that I might hurt his precious rebellion. But that doesn’t really matter, does it? Because the point is… the point is, whether he did it for me or for himself, he still did it. He went out there, and he got help. He went out there, and he got you.”

Dax sighed. She didn’t like the reverence trembling in her voice, hushed and quiet, so much like awe. “I’m not a miracle cure,” she reminded her, very softly.

“I know that.” Her fingertips were trembling too, delicate little tremors as she gripped Dax’s hand. “I know you’re not going to make everything better just by being here. But don’t you see how big a deal it is that you _are_ here? Don’t you see how comforting it is just to have you by my side? Don’t you see how incredible it is that I’m not alone any more? Don’t you see how amazing it is? How unimaginable? How…” She trailed off, shaking her head, breathless and stunned. “How can you not see? How can you not see how impossible it is that I have you?”

Jadzia’s eyes were very bright when she looked at her, wide and strangely beautiful in a face so much like her own. Dax had always enjoyed a healthy appreciation of her own attractiveness, no matter the body she was in, but she noticed it all the more now, faced with Jadzia and that wide-eyed wonder. It was a little unnerving — but only a little — to feel the jolt in her chest, the hitch in her breathing, familiar but strange, as she realised for the first time just how breathtaking this woman was who shared her face.

By sheer force of will, she pulled back, turning her face away so that she wouldn’t have to look into those blue eyes, to see the hope, the reverence there. “I do see,” she murmured softly. “And I do understand. But I’m not…” She glanced back up, and she could tell by the glow on Jadzia’s face that she would never be able to convince her. “Look, just try not to put me up on a pedestal, okay? I’m afraid of heights.”

Jadzia chuckled lightly. “Me too.”

She leaned in, then, pressing tender little kisses to Dax’s cheek, her forehead, and her mouth. They were quick, chaste little things, fleeting moments of half-contact and eager affection, as delicate and fragile as Jadzia herself, and it was only when she pulled away that Dax realised how strange they felt, how odd the tingling in her skin, shivering flushes of memory turning it warm and pink.

The moment was unsettling, not just because the kisses came from her own lips, but because they came so tenderly, so gentle and so utterly without intent. She could still feel the Intendant’s mark on her, in the places where the bruises still throbbed and the places where she was healed and mended. She could feel Joran’s mark, too, though it felt less unwelcome now than it had in a long time. Lately, it seemed that everyone who touched her did so with violence and brutality, spilling blood and raising welts, branding her and marking her, blood cut from her flesh and pain sharpened in her head. Physicality was a painful thing here, it seemed, and it turned her into something wild.

But this was different. Jadzia kissed her like she really did think she was some kind of miracle cure, and touched her like she deserved that pedestal, too much gild and too much height. She touched her like Dax might once have touched herself, like that shy little girl might once have explored her own body. Long before Joran, even before Curzon, back when she was young and inexperienced, back when she didn’t know anything and thought she knew everything. Back then, she hadn’t been interested in anything like this, in touching or being touched, in sharing kisses, fingertips and lips and trembling feeling. She hadn’t cared what felt good, what felt pleasant; she hadn’t had the time or the patience to learn, but if she ever had found a measure of either, she suspected it would have gone like this, like Jadzia, fragile kisses and tentative touches, sweet and soft and achingly gentle.

Dax had corrupted her, she thought. The symbiont had hardened her, shaped her with muscle memory, driven her to sensation that was fierce and furious. It had opened her virgin eyes to things she’d never let herself imagine, to Curzon’s experimentalism and Emony’s self-awareness, to Torias’s love of all things pleasurable and Audrid’s love of simply loving. Dax had opened her eyes to everything, and then Joran had come in and painted over those colours with something black and cold. He’d twisted Curzon’s passion into violence, Torias’s pleasure into pain and back again until the two were impossibly interconnected, had taken love and turned it into hatred, kindness into brutality. He had made her harder than the symbiont could ever have dreamed of, and it was only now, with the tenderness of Jadzia’s lips, that she realised just how long it had been since she’d felt, or wanted, something gentle.

Until now, she could barely even remember what gentleness felt like. When she closed her eyes, she thought of the Intendant, of Joran, of the two of them together. She thought of slender fingers used with ruthless efficiency, of a blade turned sideways, of wounds and welts, blood and bruises, pleasure in pain. She thought of of desperate sobs and ragged screams, of exhaustion, of a body driven almost to its breaking point, of a cruel smile and sharp teeth, both leaving different kinds of marks. She thought of release earned by sweat and blood and tears, of soreness that lasted for days, of dermal regenerators to smooth over the skin just so it could be broken anew. She thought of terrible things, of brutality and violence and want, of unforgivable sins whispered delectably on a tyrant’s lips. She thought of how much she’d enjoyed it. 

How strange, she thought, this thing and this moment and this woman. How strange was Jadzia, with her tender touches, her reverence and her misplaced awe. How strange…

How strange to be touched without pain.

Without thinking, she reached down, fingertips tripping clumsily over the folds of fabric, stumbling down to her side, to her hip, to her belt and the knife sheathed there. Her first instinct was to pull it out, to use it, on herself, or on Jadzia, maybe even on them both. It was reflexive in her, the soul-deep urge to chase away all trace of tenderness, to reforge that strange sensation into the violence she was used to, all the brutality that had become second nature since she’d been here, since Joran had taken up residence in her head. It was so tempting, so enticing, so easy…

Her skin tingled, uncomfortable and itchy, and her fingers twitched over the handle of the knife. She wanted to carve out the parts of her that Jadzia touched, carve out the worship in her eyes and the brush of her lips, the way they connected so fundamentally, the way they both wanted nothing more than to be healed and whole and complete again, to be themselves and to trust themselves. She wanted to cut all that out of her, out of them both, to tear away the flesh until the old familiar violence came back, until she felt nothing but the urge to feed, to hurt, to kill. She wanted to wrap herself up in those things, those things she knew and hated and was. She wanted it all so badly, and it didn’t help at all that to know it wasn’t really her that wanted it at all, that it was the experience of this place, the taint of Terok Nor, the sick touch of the Intendant and the rust of the Ore Processing Centre staining her skin and her soul.

Still, though, she wanted. Though she knew it wasn’t her, though she knew it was wrong, though she knew that she was out, that she was free, that she was safe here in Jadzia’s arms, though she knew that Terok Nor was far behind her… still, she wanted to hurt.

“Jadzia.”

The voice wasn’t hers, but the name was. It took her a moment to remember that. Jadzia’s lips were cool against her cheek, then wet against her own, and her voice was so much deeper than Dax’s had ever been. Dax pulled her in close, kissed her as hard as she had ever kissed the Intendant, and choked on a sob as Jadzia wrapped that roughness up in reverence and tenderness and awe. She was so gentle, so soft, so many things that had no place in this universe, and Dax gasped and whimpered into her mouth, flinching against the strangeness even as she felt it swallow her, grounding her in the unnatural familiarity, in the ice-blue of her own eyes and the strength of her own arms and the softness of her own lips.

“Jadzia.”

She didn’t know which of them said it this time, but it didn’t matter. _Jadzia_ , and for one fleeting moment, that was both of them.

The violence was still there, yes, still inside her, just like it always was, but Jadzia brought her back to the moment, to the cave wall and the dirt floor and the bed. She was here; she was where she was supposed to be, and the woman staring at her now with such reverence was not the Intendant. She was Jadzia. And Dax could not let her down.

She could drown herself, all too easily, but she couldn’t drown Jadzia. She wouldn’t. Not when she saw in her so much of the little girl she used to be, not when the awe lighting up her face reminded her so much of that young naive little thing, of wide eyes and stuttering shyness, of a hopeful heart that even Joran couldn’t touch.

Closing her eyes against the urge to use it, she held the knife up between them. She didn’t draw it this time, leaving it safe in its sheath, the only thing in the room that was whole and complete.

“Here,” she said, voice thick and raspy, the echoes of memory and the sting of emotion turning her tongue to something heavy and useless. “I’m back now. I got you what you needed, and I got back in one piece. I completed the mission, just like you said I would if I kept it close… but now I’m back, so I don’t need it any more.”

There was a kind of finality in the way Jadzia’s hands wrapped around the sheath, brushing against Dax’s own with that same tenderness she’d allowed to shine through in the fluttering of her kisses, the same soft-souled compassion that still felt so strange against Dax’s skin. It twisted her insides, not in a way that was unpleasant, just in a way that her nerves struggled to process, a way that reminded her just how much she had been through on Terok Nor, how much she had experienced and how completely it had touched her, on every possible level. _Trauma,_ she thought dimly, then thought of Keiko and hated herself for being so self-indulgent.

It was like she couldn’t remember what tenderness was any more, like the sensation was something new and alien. It was like a foreign language or the biochemical make-up of a brand new species or a new skill she was learning for the first time.

Her stomach clenched with sudden inexplicable panic, and she jerked her hand back as though it had been burned as soon as Jadzia had a firm enough grip on the sheath. She felt shaky, limbs twitching, alight with sensation that she couldn’t process. Her hands felt empty without the knife, and her clothing felt too tight without its weight tugging down on the hip. She felt odd, glad to be free of the knife and all the pain it had inflicted, but she also felt lost, like a frightened young child who had just lost their security blanket. On the one hand, the serrated blade was gone, and with it all its terrible temptations, but on the other, it felt inescapably like she’d lost the one thing that had kept her sane. She would need to depend on herself now, she knew, and she wasn’t entirely sure that she could do it.

“Thanks,” Jadzia said with a nod, oblivious to Dax’s inner thoughts.

Dax nodded her acknowledgement, but didn’t reply. She following the path of Jadzia’s gaze as she looked down at the knife, fingertips tracing well-worn patterns across the surface of the sheath, a fond smile lifting her lips, like she was welcoming an old friend home. Idly, Dax wondered if Jadzia’s fingers were itching as badly as her own, if she was longing to draw out the blade and run her bare hands across its edge, if she felt so completely in rhythm with that twisted dark thing inside of her. Joran, she thought, even as her memory replaced the distorted image of his face with the Intendant’s, and let her mind’s eye paint over them both with long shallow cuts oozing with blood.

Jadzia looked up at her again after a moment, the smile dissolving into sorrow. “You know,” she mused, almost to herself, “I didn’t really expect you to give it back.”

“Why not?” Dax asked, genuinely surprised. “What would I do with it?”

The question conjured up more unwitting memories, and she closed her eyes to brace against visions of blood streaking her hands, the thin dark streaks obscuring her mind’s eye fading away to bring back the Intendant’s sinister smile in full force. She swallowed hard, opened her eyes with a hushed gasp, and pressed her palm flat against the stone wall, the same stone that had been smeared with her blood the last time she was here. Blood. It was everywhere and inescapable. It followed her, no matter how far she ran or where she hid. What would she do with Jadzia’s knife? What wouldn’t she do with it?

“I don’t know,” Jadzia was saying, looking oddly guarded. “You might’ve wanted a souvenir, or something to remember me by. You might’ve wanted to keep it close so you’d have a weapon if we turned on you, or something to use on Benjamin if he refused to let you go back to your universe. There’s a hundred reasons to keep a weapon close in this place. Haven’t you learned that by now? Hell, for all I know, you might’ve wanted to melt it down and sell it as scrap. Who am I to stop you?”

“It’s yours,” Dax reminded her; it should have been reason enough, but they both knew it wasn’t. “It belongs to you. And I…” She wanted to say that she wasn’t a thief, that she had morals, but she wasn’t sure that was true any more. “I’m not like you. Where I come from, we don’t need to take whatever we can get. We don’t need to claim other people’s property for ourselves. We have plenty. And so do I.”

It was only as she said it that she realised she wasn’t just talking about material possessions; she was talking about her friends, too, about Benjamin and Julian and—

_Nerys._

Her breath hitched in her throat. Pain lanced her chest like a lightning-strike, cutting off her breathing and rending everything else from her. She folded her hands in her lap to keep from reaching out and taking the knife back, suddenly desperate to turn it back on herself, not on her palm this time but deep in her chest, to carve out the tiny fractured pieces that still remained of her heart and shatter them until nothing was left at all. Forcing herself to breathe, she ignored the instinct, ignored the urge to destroy, ignored everything but the reason she was here.

“It’s yours,” she said again, choked and ragged, and opened her eyes to replace the vision of fire-burnt passion with cool blue ice. “It’s yours, and I don’t need it.”

Jadzia was staring at her, brows knitting into a frown, as though she could sense everything Dax was thinking, as though she could hear the name ricocheting off the walls of her mind as clearly as if she’d said it aloud. Did she think _‘Nerys’_ when she thought of the Intendant? Did the name make her smile, or did it make her shudder? It certainly made Dax shudder, and she wished she could remember a time when it had only made her smile, a time before such simple things as names became so complicated. 

“Are you all right?” Jadzia asked, sounding hushed. “You don’t look well. And your hands are shaking.”

Glancing down at them, Dax realised she was right, and she snarled a vicious curse under her breath. There was no point in trying to deny it, not with the evidence right there, white-knuckled and tense, and so she decided to simply cover it up instead, picking up the tricorder and gripping it tightly with both hands, holding it between their two bodies like a barrier. She made a show of studying the readouts, looking contemplative even though they hadn’t really changed much since the last time she checked. It was a pointless exercise, just going through the motions, but it offered a welcome distraction from her own condition, and for that alone it was worthwhile.

As she expected, Jadzia leaped on it, Dax’s trembling hands all but forgotten as her eyes flicked to the tricorder. “Any change?” she asked.

Dax shrugged, making a concentrated effort not to sound too optimistic. “A small improvement,” she admitted, and spun the tricorder around so that Jadzia could take a look at it.

The blind confusion on her face was evidence enough that she had no idea what she was looking at, and Dax found herself wondering if she’d ever had to read a tricorder in her life. She wouldn’t have much reason to, she supposed; Jadzia didn’t strike her as the cautious type, so much as a hit-and-run pirate who stole as much as she could and shrugged off the rest. Who needed medical training in a life like that? She thought of her exile again, and shook her head sadly. No knowledge, no experience, not even a rudimentary comprehension of basic first-aid. How had she even survived this long?

“What the hell am I looking at?” she demanded, giving voice to all of Dax’s doubts.

Putting her out of her misery, Dax pointed at the tiny screen and singling out a sequence of figures. “See this? Your levels have gone up two per cent. Once we’ve got them a little more stable—”

“—you can cut the crap and start helping me?”

Dax bristled at the accusation. “I am helping you,” she said, clipped and even, then forced herself to soften with a low sigh. “Look, I know you’re afraid. I know you’re impatient. I know you want results. Hell, so do I. But if we don’t take this slowly and carefully, it could get worse.”

That had the desired effect. Suddenly sober, Jadzia cut a glance back down to Dax’s hands, seeking out the tremors that Dax so desperately wished weren’t still there. She set the tricorder down on the floor, clasping her hands behind her back, safely out of sight, and tried not to grimace as Jadzia bit her lip.

“How much worse?” she asked, hesitant, the uneasy curiosity of someone who didn’t really want to know but felt like she should anyway.

The implication behind the question was crystal clear: _‘lie to me’ _. That broke Dax’s heart almost more than the way she was still staring at the space where her hands had been.__

__Dax sighed, and tried to cut through the white noise in her head, tried to strike a balance between what she wanted to say and what she needed to. She owed Jadzia a diplomatic answer that held at least some measure of honesty, but that was easier said than done. Everything was easier said than done, it seemed, and she heaved another weary sigh._ _

__It was all so straightforward in theory; that was the frustrating part. It was all so simple in her head, but then it became a convoluted muddle when she tried to put that theory into practice. Everything felt mixed up inside of her, and that made it hard to twist the straightforward theory into a practice that either of them could use. Joran’s violent memories swirled inside her still, but undercut now by the self-inflicted violence Dax had indulged with the Intendant; the worst things that had happened on that station were her own doing, not his, and that made it hard to tell Jadzia anything about her own future. It wasn’t so black-and-white any more. Jadzia or Joran; the differences weren’t so clear-cut as they had been when she’d first arrived._ _

__Back then, she had been afraid, of herself and for herself, just like this Jadzia was now. She had been frightened of the dreams that made her think and feel such terrible things, frightened of the primal instincts that gripped her, the feral urges that drove her to hide out in the holosuites back on Deep Space Nine, frightened of the impenetrable confusion that had inspired Kira to ask her along on that stupid pilgrimage. Back then, being afraid had made sense. Her thoughts and her feelings were wrong. She was wrong._ _

__It was more complicated now. It was frustrating, because inside her own head it felt so much simpler; she could separate her own feelings from his now, and most of the time she could tell straight away where a given emotion was coming from. Too much fury or too much hate would come from Joran, and the tremors in her hands were Jadzia’s alone. But with that simplicity came a new kind of danger, the threat of becoming complacent, of letting her guard down because she recognised the difference, and letting it devour her. It wasn’t the same struggle she had fought before, that was true… but it was still a struggle._ _

__How to explain all of that to Jadzia, though? How to tell her that it wasn’t as simple as distinguishing one voice from another, or knowing where those unwanted feelings came from. How to make her see just how much worse things would get without frightening her too much? The truth was, if the hallucinations faded completely, even if she defeated this thing more thoroughly than Dax herself had, even if she never found herself tormented by those dark dreams, even if her recovery appeared perfect, it still wouldn’t be enough. No matter what happened her, she would still spend every day struggling to hold on to some small fragment of herself, some tiny piece of basic decency that was all she had to isolate what she was and what she couldn’t let herself become. She was doomed either way, but how could Dax tell her that?_ _

__She couldn’t, of course. Jadzia would have to figure it out on her own, just like Dax had to. She would have to learn for herself that worse things were coming, one way or another, that the best she could hope for was making the transition easy. She would have to discover for herself how best to deal with the problems that would face her. And she would have to face it bravely, without flinching. Telling her what she would learn for herself in due time would only make her falter; it would tear from her what little faith she might still have in herself, just as it had done to Dax, and she would not allow that._ _

__And so, because she saw the fear in her face, the subtle twitching of her jaw that said she was straining even now to hold down something she still couldn’t grasp, because she was here to take care of this Jadzia, not to break her, because she was here to help her deal with this, not make it harder, because she knew what Jadzia wanted to hear and knew that she could not offer it, because of all those things, she shook her head._ _

__“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Because we’re going to take it slow, and we’re going to be sensible.”_ _

__It wasn’t the lie, but it wasn’t the truth either. It was the only thing either of them needed to know._ _

__Jadzia nodded, but Dax could tell she wasn’t comfortable with the lack of information. Whether she was comforted by the lie or not, Dax knew it didn’t matter; she was still a Dax, and Daxes were too curious to ever be sated by half-answers._ _

__Maybe she should have brought Quark along, she thought ruefully, or one of his Ferengi friends. They were experts in the field of deception and sleight of hand. They could sell even the most unconvincing of lies and then distract their audience with a smile and a wink, laughing while they robbed them blind. She could use some of that Ferengi ingenuity now, she thought, someone who could leaven the seriousness of the situation with a wink and a smile, who could balm the truth by peddling some useless placebo, or at least distract everyone with a rousing game of—_ _

__“…tongo!”_ _

__She didn’t even realise she’d blurted it out loud until she glanced back up and saw the way that Jadzia was staring at her. “Did you just sneeze?” she asked._ _

__Dax laughed. “No. I was just…” As she said it, she felt a twitch lift her lips, the first sincere smile since she’d got back from Terok Nor. It was a long shot, and a stupid one, but it was a distraction, and that was exactly what they needed right now. “Tongo,” she said again, stronger. “It’s a game. Do you play?”_ _

__Jadzia frowned, confusion mixed with carefully concealed gratitude; she understood perfectly what Dax was trying to do, and she was grateful._ _

__“No,” she said. “I can’t say I do.”_ _

__Dax flashed a grin, fierce and feral and entirely Ferengi. “I was hoping you’d say that.”_ _


	25. Chapter 25

It was more than just a distraction.

There were few things in any universe that Dax loved to talk about more than tongo, and she always relished the opportunity to induct a willing student to the game; back on Deep Space Nine, she’d gotten many a young ensign into trouble, keeping them up all night in Quark’s and then expecting them to be in a fit state for their shift the following morning. Jadzia was no ensign, of course, but she was an attentive student and a quick learner, listening with all the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a soon-to-be gambler in the making, and Dax took real delight in explaining the rules of the game a thousand times over.

The lessons served a double purpose. In the first, it took both of their minds away from what was going on, from the beeping of the tricorder and the dip and rise of Jadzia’s isoboramine levels, from ill-gotten benzocyatizine and half-forgotten hallucinations. It distracted them from what was important, but far more effective than that, it let them focus on something that wasn’t.

Dax hadn’t realised until now just how great a gift it was to have something that didn’t matter. Oh, she’d be the first to say that tongo mattered a great deal when she was down to her last strip of latinum and Quark was leering at her over his cards, big talk and big smiles as he waited for her to spin the wheel and put herself out of her misery. She’d be the first to say that it was the most important thing in the galaxy when her pride was at stake and there was an audience gathering around on all sides, giving odds and placing hushed bets. She’d be the first to say that winning was everything when she was losing, and she’d give a bloody nose to anyone who said it wasn’t; hell, she’d even spent the occasional night in a holding cell after some disagreement or another got ugly. Yes, most of the time, Dax would be the first to crow about how important tongo was, but this was different. Right here and right now, with Jadzia looking at her like she’d fallen from the sky, it felt like the most unimportant thing in either of their universes. And that made it incredible.

The look on Jadzia’s face was incredible too, but in a very different way. She was still starry-eyed, alight with the same reverent awe as before, and it made Dax uncomfortable in a way that was entirely unexpected. She was long accustomed to being appreciated, and she was definitely long accustomed to being admired; she had more than her share of suitors on Deep Space Nine, and many more who just wished that they could be called suitors. It wasn’t something she’d ever been particularly ashamed of; in fact, newly joined and armed with Curzon’s cocky confidence, Torias’s unabashed vanity, and Emony’s hard-won self-assurance, the young initiate who had once been shy little Jadzia found a new lease of life in the lusty stares of men and women. She’d developed a new appreciation for being appreciated, and if she were completely honest, she’d come to thrive on it.

But that was before. Before this universe, before Terok Nor, before the Intendant. Those things changed her, and the shamelessness that came so easily before was a universe away now. Now, suddenly, the sight of such unapologetic adoration — even shining in her own eyes — left her feeling cold and uneasy. It made her feel exposed in a way that didn’t feel entirely willing. She didn’t want to be appreciated any more, she realised, and she definitely didn’t want to be wanted.

She knew how Jadzia felt about her. Daxes were never very good at hiding their feelings, even when they should, and Jadzia was so much like the young woman she used to be that it was almost embarrassing. She couldn’t hide the awe, the reverence, all those things that Dax wanted to cast out of her. She couldn’t hide the admiration, intoxicated by the idea that Dax somehow represented a deeper kind of salvation, hope and promise and a companion to share the worst things with.

With Dax at her side, she was not alone. It was a sweet thought to anyone, but all the more to a Jadzia who had lost so much, who had thought she’d be alone forever. Knowing what she knew about her, Dax couldn’t blame Jadzia for being a little smitten by the idea of someone new to take the place of her dead lover, to share the things that only another Trill could. It was all very seductive, she knew, and she recognised too well the gleam in her counterpart’s eye when their gazes lingered just a little too long on each other, the tremors in her fingertips and her lips when they brushed bare skin, the hitch in her breath when they got too close. It made Dax uncomfortable in a way that had nothing to do with the fact that this woman shared her face and her identity.

She felt unclean, and that felt unnatural to someone who had seen so much over so many lifetimes. She felt like her skin was stained through with dirt and sweat and blood, burned and blistered by terrible deeds, like she would never be able to wash herself clean. It didn’t matter that her clothes — Jadzia’s clothes — were a hundred times more dirty than her skin could ever be; it wasn’t her clothing that felt unclean. It was _her_.

Just the thought of being touched made her shudder, and the thought of those touches turning to something intimate quickened her pulse and soured her stomach. It made her panic, drove deep with a fear that was so unlike anything she’d known before. Jadzia might be just as incorrigible as she was, and once upon a time Dax might have shared her feelings, or at least been willing to indulge them for curiosity’s sake. But Jadzia hadn’t just spent the best part of a week in Terok Nor. Jadzia hadn’t been corrupted by the joint efforts of Joran Belar and Intendant Kira Nerys. Jadzia hadn’t washed her hands in the blood of innocents. Dax had, and when she looked up now and saw the adulation reflected back at her through eyes that looked so much like her own, all she felt was shame.

So, instead, she talked about tongo. She talked about latinum, about cards and wheels, about ‘confront’ and ‘retreat’, about things that didn’t matter. She talked about tongo, and when Jadzia looked at her like she was something delicate and beautiful, she let herself imagine it was Quark trying another lewd tactic to distract her.

Tongo was easy, a distraction from the unclean itch beneath Dax’s skin, and a distraction for Jadzia when those awe-touched eyes grew clouded and darted back towards the tricorder. They both knew that she couldn’t read it, but that wasn’t enough to stop her, fear flickering across her features for a moment, and it was by easy reflex that Dax raised her voice and demanded that she pay attention to the game.

“Don’t focus on that,” she said, forcing her tone to harden, even as she found her own eyes cutting a glance to check the readouts. “Let me focus on that. You focus on what I’m trying to teach you.” Jadzia blinked and blushed, but she didn’t argue, and Dax nodded her approval. “That’s better. Now, if there’s a purchase of five, and a sale of fifteen…”

There was no hope of obtaining a tongo wheel in a place as barren and desolate as this — truth be told, Dax was still trying to figure out how they’d even managed to get a bed — so she improvised by marking out an approximation of one in the dirt of the floor and setting one of the empty benzocyatic vials in the middle. It was far from ideal, but it provided a decent enough approximation, and the intrigue on Jadzia’s face as she watched Dax put the rules into practice was well worth the earth and grime underneath her fingernails. She smiled, pleased with both of their progress.

Once Jadzia had a passable grasp of the game and how it was played, it was only natural that Dax moved on to telling stories, colourful anecdotes about her own achievements, gladly replacing Jadzia’s precarious pedestal with one more suited to her skills.

She talked about the first game she ever played, back when even Curzon was a green young host, an arrogant youth swollen on his own self-importance. He’d been utterly humiliated, of course, losing everything except the clothes on his back — and that was only because they weren’t worth anything — but that hadn’t stopped him from going back for more, again and again, gracelessly taking defeat after defeat, drowning his shame in bloodwine until, at long last, he made a victory or two.

She talked about herself, as well, about shy young Jadzia, newly joined and stumbling her way through the symbiont’s memories. It was one of the few moments that were exclusively hers, and she remembered with a flush of pride the way her nerves had sung, the way her whole soul had lit up in the moment she realised that she was better than Curzon. So young, so stupid and so small, and yet here at last was something that she did better than him. It was a revelation, she remembered, the first time she allowed herself to think that she might have something to bring to the symbiont after all.

Jadzia listened, rapt and attentive, and Dax found that the adoration tasted less bitter when it came attached to something frivolous. She wondered if the young woman sitting opposite her had found a moment like that yet, if she’d had a chance to find her own place among the symbiont’s myriad memories. She wondered how much of this universe’s Curzon still raged inside her, how much of Audrid or Tobin. She wondered how much of that fateful choice — love for exile — had been Torias’s.

This Jadzia, this woman with the wide eyes and the set jaw and the stars burning in her ice-blue eyes, was as strange as she was familiar. There was a wildness about her, a depth of aggression that seemed to Dax far more the product of the universe she’d been raised in than a gift from the symbiont inside her. Jadzia was angry, not just because Joran was making her angry, but because her life had made her angry. Joran was just one more excuses to be angry, one more source of rage in a universe already teeming with good reasons.

Did anyone in this place know how to play tongo?, Dax wondered. Did anyone in this forsaken universe know how to play anything, how to do anything just for the sheer enjoyment of it? Did anyone in this run-down rebel base know how to have fun? Remembering the dour faces and slumping shoulders of Sisko’s fellow Terrans, she rather doubted it. This place was so bleak, so desolate and hopeless that it would have cut a hole through her heart if the Intendant hadn’t devoured it already. There was no place for fun here.

She kept Jadzia focused on the makeshift wheel as she cut another quick glance at the tricorder, kept her attentive on her stories as she loaded another vial into the hypo, a fresh dose of medication to counteract the slight dip in her isoboramine levels, and though she knew better than to expect that she could keep her from asking questions, she tried her best to keep her distracted from the hiss and the sting as she applied it to her neck.

Of course, it didn’t work. Jadzia glanced up at her, a twitch of unease tugging at the corners of her mouth as she opened it, a half-formed question already shaping itself on her lips.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dax told her, with as much authority as she could muster. “I already told you: I’ll worry about the treatments, you worry about playing the game.”

“Easier said than done,” Jadzia grumbled, but relaxed as Dax pulled the hypo away and set it down. “This game is a mess.”

Dax smiled. “The Ferengi like their games that way,” she said, feeling a pang as she thought of Quark. “It makes it easier to cheat.”

Jadzia rolled her eyes, and with a concentrated effort tore her gaze away from the tricorder and back to the scratched-out tongo wheel. Dax, trying desperately to do the same as the readouts began to flash again, redoubled her efforts to keep them both occupied by less unpleasant things. Still talking about her own talents, she set to work fashioning playing cards out of unused data PADDs and collecting jagged little rocks and smooth pebbles to use as currency.

It worked well, for a time. Jadzia enjoyed putting her learning into practice, picking up the complexities just as quickly as Dax herself had, and Dax took her own kind of joy in the look on Jadzia’s face when she made a particularly impressive move, disbelief giving way to pride in them both. She felt comfortable, content and in her element, surrounded by things that made sense, the same nonsensical nothings that whiled away so many long nights on Deep Space Nine. Though it was just her and her own reflection, when she let herself lean back and close her eyes, she could imagine she was surrounded by her Ferengi friends, home and far away from all of this. For a few blissful hours, she could almost allow herself to believe that maybe they had a chance of getting through this after all.

Of course, it didn’t last. Nothing good ever did in this stripped-down hellhole of a universe, and Dax supposed she should have known better than to expect it to.

The moment came on suddenly, without any kind of warning. One second Jadzia was staring down at the scratched-out markings on the floor, thoughtfully biting her lip, and less than a heartbeat later she was lunging at Dax, scattering their makeshift pieces and decimating the wheel, eyes wide and wild and mouth twisted into a furious snarl.

Briefly, absurdly, Dax was so worried about the destruction of her precious tongo setup that she didn’t stop to think about what was happening. It took her so much by surprise that she didn’t think at all, didn’t react to the bigger issue until that issue had its knife out and was holding it to her throat.

Jadzia, she realised, had left the building.

Her survival instincts kicked in at the same time as the realisation, and she reeled backwards, dancing beyond the reach of the blade. Half-blind and furious, Jadzia swung again, and Dax lashed out by pure reflex, taking Jadzia’s wrist and twisting hard.

Jadzia cried out in pain, but didn’t drop the knife, pushing against Dax’s arm with staggering strength, and Dax bit back a curse as she twisted again, wrenching Jadzia’s wrist backwards at an impossible angle, harder and harder, shoving back against the resistance until she felt something give way. This time, Jadzia didn’t just cry out; she screamed, a deafening and terrible sound that drowned out the hideous _crack_ as her fingers went slack, the knife clattering to the floor between them.

Reflexively, Dax kicked the weapon out of reach, pulling Jadzia in close until their bodies were tight against each other. Jadzia howled, struggling, but Dax closed her mind against the sound, wrestling her down to the ground and holding her, using all of her weight to keep her pinned.

Jadzia flailed, furious and uncontrolled, but Dax did not ease up her grip. She didn’t need her experience or insight to know what was going on, though it certainly helped. The lifeless eyes, the vacant stare, the growl catching in her throat… she recognised it all too well.

Dax had never seen a hallucination from this side before, and it terrified her. Was this how she’d looked when she’d been taken by them? Was this what Quark had seen in the moment before she came back to herself and realised where she was? Was this how Julian had found her, holding her steady and keeping her from hurting either one of them in those horrible moments before he’d broken through and brought her back? Had they seen her like this, so unhinged, so chaotic, so close to the edge of madness? Had they seen her so frightening and so frightened at the same time?

The thought made her feel vulnerable, exposed, and for half a second as the emotion washed over her she felt her grip on Jadzia faltering, hands starting to shake again where she still pressed her to the dirt floor.

That one moment of weakness was all it took, and in a heartbeat Jadzia had the upper hand once more. Suddenly, impossibly, Dax was the one with her back to the floor and Jadzia the one hunching over her, hissing and growling like a wild animal, a predator on the hunt.

Hazily, she remembered a dream just like this, of a Jadzia who was so much stronger than Dax had given her credit for, a Jadzia who exposed her weaknesses and tore her apart. She’d been so proud, so pleased, so driven by ambition and bloodlust. But this wasn’t a dream, and she had much more to worry about now than waking up in a cold sweat. 

She tried to regain her balance, to sit up and overpower Jadzia once more, but she never had the chance. The air was knocked out of her lungs before she’d even managed to suck down a full breath, and then her head was snapping violently back as a flailing fist collided with her face, just underneath her eye. For a second, she was blind and useless, stars dancing in front of her vision as her chest and stomach heaved, and then it was all she could do to try and clear her head.

She groaned, spitting dirt and blood, but didn’t waste time checking the damage. She could still breathe, could still move, and could just about see; that was all she had time to assess. Jadzia wouldn’t wait for her to recover herself, she knew, and she had no intention of being caught unawares again. She lurched upright, raising an arm with lightning-quick reflexes to block the next blow almost before Jadzia had even readied it.

“Jadzia,” she managed, surprised by how thick her voice was, how heavy her tongue felt in her mouth. “Jadzia!”

Unsurprisingly, Jadzia’s only response was to pull back her fist once more, and this time even Dax’s battle-honed reflexes weren’t quick enough. She choked, reeling as the blow struck her square in the abdomen, a brutal blow to both host and symbiont; Jadzia knew her way around a fight as well as Dax herself did, it seemed. Dax tried to curl in on herself herself, to protect the symbiont if not herself, but Jadzia locked her knees on either side of her waist and held her down. Vaguely, Dax noticed that her other hand was useless, that she was cradling it to her chest, and she indulged a moment to wonder just how badly she’d hurt her in forcing her to drop the knife. But, of course, there was no time for thinking about that just then, and Dax willed her shaky reflexes to awaken once more, forcing herself back to the moment even as the symbiont reeled beneath her bruised belly.

“Jadzia!” she forced out again. “ _Jadzia_!”

Though her face remained blank and featureless, Jadzia’s whole body flinched at the sound, shuddering as though struck by a physical blow, and Dax took the momentary advantage with both hands, struggling her way upright. By sheer force of will, she pushed Jadzia up and off her, both of them gasping for breath as Dax drove her back. They were a relatively even match, at least in theory, but Dax had the edge of two weeks spent ruthlessly breaking her own limits in the holosuite, and she harnessed every iota of that extra strength now, shoving Jadzia down to the dirt floor and pinning her once more.

“Jadzia!” she cried again, voice stronger now.

It was the only thing she had, the only thing she could do. She couldn’t break through to her; she knew that too well from her own experiences. All she could do was hold her down and say her name until something snapped, until she either came out of it on her own or the hallucination rode itself out naturally. That was it; that was all there was. Either way, patience was her only weapon.

She didn’t dare to try anything more than that, didn’t want to risk inflicting even more unwitting damage, and so she just held on tight, pinning her arms and her body, holding her down and keeping her from hurting either of them again, both of them straining and sweat-soaked. Jadzia bared her teeth, trying desperately thrash herself free, but she was wounded and Dax was only winded, and it wasn’t long before she started to tire, her anguished writhing slowly reduced to the occasional frustrated twitch, snarls and hisses fading out into whimpers and groans.

Cautiously, carefully, Dax eased up the death-grip she had on her arms, shifting her body to give them both a little more breathing room. She didn’t let her up completely, not trusting her to keep from lunging again, but she couldn’t bear to keep holding her down so forcefully. She could see the bruises swelling on her wrist, stark and brutal where she’d twisted the knife out of her hand, and didn’t want to think about how much it must hurt. That was her doing, and it stung to have to pin her down as well.

It was for her own good — in truth, it was for both of their own good — but that didn’t make the task any easier. Jadzia trusted her, and Dax’s heart ached to hear the low whines rippling from inside her, to watch the rage etched like strain on her own face, to know that she was causing her so much distress. She knew that Jadzia wasn’t really there, that she was far away and didn’t even know it was Dax who was holding her down. She knew that she was keeping her safe, but it still felt so much like she was hurting her.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, leaning in to brush her lips against Jadzia’s damp brow. “It’ll all be over soon, I promise. You’ll come back to yourself, and then you’ll thank me for stopping you before you did something stupid. You’ll be fine, and you’ll thank me. You’ll…”

Jadzia cut her off with another rage-touched wail, and Dax sighed.

In truth she really didn’t know who she was trying to convince anyway. Jadzia was too far gone to hear her, and Dax herself had long since given up on believing in her own good intentions. Whatever she was hoping to achieve with her hollow reassurances, she was failing spectacularly on all fronts. Jadzia still struggled in her grasp, weak as she was, and Dax’s own heart still cried out in empathic suffering, trying not to surrender to her own anguished memories. They were both in trouble, she thought hazily, feeling the pain spreading across her ribs and belly, watching the shadow of it flicker like recognition across Jadzia’s face. They were both doomed.

Ever the deity of bad timing (apparently in all universes), Sisko chose that moment to barge in on them.

“What the hell is going on in here?” he yelled. He didn’t bother to wait for an answer, happy to let the scene speak for itself, and before Dax had even opened her mouth he’d pulled out his weapon and was waving it about. Like that would help any of them, she thought angrily. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing with my woman?”

Dax clenched her jaw. This was the last thing she needed, two out-of-control hot-heads to content with. Bad enough that Jadzia was still struggling under her, but she didn’t have the strength to keep holding her and fight off her overprotective lover at the same time. She barely had enough strength to keep from doubling over herself; what chance did she have of maintaining order now?

Still, though, she tried. “If you must know,” she said softly, “I’m saving her from herself.” Sisko growled at that, but Dax held her ground, refusing to apologise or move. “She’s having one of her hallucinations. In case that’s not blindingly obvious. She doesn’t know where she is. Hell, she probably doesn’t even know _who_ she is. So, if you don’t mind…”

“I do mind,” Sisko growled. He was so bull-headed, so arrogant; Dax hadn’t seen that kind of attitude in her Benjamin Sisko since his days as a callow and headstrong ensign. “She might worship the ground you walk on, but this is still my goddamned operation. And my bedroom, come to that.”

Dax took a moment to steady Jadzia as she struggled again, then glared at Sisko. “I’m aware of that,” she said, injecting as much sobriety as she could muster into her voice, hoping that the evenness would infect him with some shred of reason. “But you brought me here to help her, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

He snorted. “Doesn’t look like it from where I’m standing.”

“I don’t give a damn where you’re standing,” Dax snapped. “It’s where she’s standing that matters. And I’m the one who knows where that is, not you.” She met his gaze, unflinching, even as Jadzia caught her bruised ribs with a flailing elbow. “So you can either barge into the middle of this like a rabid targ, and put all three of us in danger, or you can step back, shut up, and give me the space and the freedom to do what you brought me here for.”

Sisko clearly didn’t like being presented with an ultimatum, but he couldn’t dispute her point. He was the one who’d brought her here, and he couldn’t exactly argue when her understanding of Jadzia’s situation was so much more intimate than his own. Still, Dax couldn’t help wondering how many more times he’d let her get away with playing the _‘you dragged me out of my universe for this, so stop whining’_ card.

Beneath her, Jadzia seemed to find a second wind, and her struggles got more violent again. Dax held her down with her hips, using her hands to secure her wrists. Jadzia whimpered, pitchy and wounded, when she brushed against the swollen bruises, and Sisko quirked a dangerous brow at the sound. Dax grimaced; the last thing she needed was for him to think that she’d manhandled his precious partner. She was feeling bad enough about that on her own, and she didn’t have the strength or the patience to deal with his accusations on top of that.

“Do you have an osteogenic stimulator?” she asked quickly. “A dermal regenerator? A—”

“What do you think?” he hissed, cutting her off with another wave of his weapon. “We’re an underground resistance movement, not a goddamned hospital.” His eyes flashed suddenly, dark and deeply dangerous as the implications of her question struck him. “If you’ve hurt her, you little bitch, I swear—”

“Later,” she told him. “I don’t have time for your posturing right now, or the patience.” Truth be told, Dax really didn’t want to admit that his concerns were actually very valid, either to herself or to him, and so she focused both of their attention back on the task at hand, distracting him and closing her ears to Jadzia’s pained whimpers. “Look,” she went on. “Jadzia and I are doing just fine here on our own, and we’d really appreciate a bit of privacy—”

As if on cue, Jadzia pulled free and socked her in the jaw.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Sisko burst out laughing. “I’m sure you would,” he said wryly.

Dax swore, floundering to reassert control of her wayward charge, pressing her hips down on Jadzia’s torso, cutting off her breathing and reclaiming her hands. What little patience she might have had for dealing with Sisko and his ego had well and truly evaporated now, and she made that clear in the way she refused to look at him, even as she raised her voice in a deadly threat.

“Leave,” she commanded. “Now.”

“The hell with you,” he muttered, and that was that. “Get away from my woman.”

She sensed rather than saw him take a step forward, and cursed again. He stormed through the meagre space at an alarming rate, and barrelled between the two of them like a herd of stampeding wildebeest. Dax felt her pulse quicken; it was difficult enough keeping Jadzia under control as she wriggled and hissed at her, and she didn’t think she had the strength to hold off a rampaging Sisko at the same time. She knew from repeated experience how unstoppable Benjamin could be when he set his mind to charging at something (and most of the time that something was Curzon), and she knew perfectly well that she was outmatched and outmuscled.

His attention, of course, wasn’t on her, and she didn’t know whether to be grateful or angry about that. He shoved her out of the way as though she wasn’t there at all, throwing her off-balance and taking his precious Jadzia into his arms. Winded and furious, Dax could do little more than watch, scrambling to her feet and ducking out of the way before the inevitable happened. Did he really have no idea who he was dealing with? Did he really not understand what was going on here, how dangerous and stupid it was to do what he was doing? Was he really that bull-headed and arrogant that he would throw himself at someone so clearly in the throes of the worst kind of delirium just to prove some stupid point?

Apparently, he was. And it seemed that Jadzia was no more happy about it than Dax was.

Dax tried to cry out a warning, but it was futile; Jadzia got to him first, and Dax couldn’t deny the sense of vindication that surged in her as she caught him smartly in the chest, lashing out blind and violent, just as she had against Dax herself. The moment of righteousness was short-lived, though, because the blow had barely connected before Jadzia was howling too, screaming all over again as the impact sent a jolt of agony through her injured wrist. Dax winced in sympathy, spitting curses all over again, and lunged at Sisko to try and haul him away before he did any more damage.

She never made it to his side, stopping short as she recognised the sudden slump in Jadzia’s shoulders, the blind lifelessness fading from her eyes, unseeing hollows replaced by the familiar ice-blue, cool water turned dark and stormy with pain and fear. Her movements were less jerky, too, and the look on her face was no longer that of a sleeper caught in a dream. She was coming back to herself, Dax realised, and cried out with relief.

“Jadzia,” she called. “It’s all right, Jadzia. It’s all right. You’re all—”

“Shut up!” Sisko shouted, seemingly venting his pain and frustration on the nearest target, not that Dax particularly cared where or why he threw his weight around, so long as he kept it away from Jadzia. “You’ve done enough damage.”

Jadzia, slowly but surely coming back to her senses, slapped him with her good hand. “That’s for not listening to her,” she said, extricating herself groggily from his arms.

Sisko rubbed the side of his face. “Women…”

She slapped him again. “And that’s for being a chauvinistic bastard.”

“I warned you,” Dax said, keeping her distance.

“You stay out of this.”

Jadzia bristled on her behalf. “ _You_ stay out of it, you self-righteous asshole.” Though she didn’t slap him again, Dax could tell that she wanted to. “Didn’t we tell you to leave us alone? What’s the matter with you?”

Sisko sucked in his breath through his teeth. “Forgive me for wanting to know what all the screaming was about,” he grumbled. “She had you pinned to the floor, for the love of—”

“Get out.” There was a tremor in her voice, the dangerous quiver of someone on the edge of a breakdown. “And stay out until one or both of us invites you back. Do you hear me?”

Sisko, characteristically, seemed content to take the outburst at its surface level, refusing as usual to look any deeper than what was immediately obvious. Dax, however, was smart enough to look a little deeper, and she saw the real cut behind the words, the strain lining Jadzia’s eyes, the terror that she could scarcely keep from overpowering her, the way she hadn’t even tried to climb back to her feet. This wasn’t about teaching Sisko the fine art of keeping boundaries, and it wasn’t about getting him to do what he was told by two people who knew the situation far better than he did. It wasn’t about pride or power or dignity, or any of the things that he took so naturally for granted. It about getting him the hell out of there before she lost what little control she had left and broke down completely.

“You heard her,” Dax said, folding her arms across her chest, eyes on Jadzia. “Get out of here. We’ll call you if we need you, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that if I were you.”

Seemingly sensing that it would do him more harm than good to argue with his lover, Sisko turned on her instead, crossing back to her side in a single long stride and getting right into her personal space. “Careful,” he warned in a guttural growl. “You don’t want to cross the wrong person around here. Things could get unpleasant.”

“Benjamin,” Jadzia barked before he had a chance to press further. Dax’s heart ached at the look on her face, pain and fear and so much guilt, but Sisko didn’t even seem to notice. “Get out.”

Because the instruction came from her and not Dax, Sisko complied, albeit with his usual sullen reluctance. “As my lady commands,” he muttered, oozing sarcasm. “But I’ll be listening, so don’t get up to anything.” He leered, though Dax could tell it was all for show, a desperate attempt at salvaging his masculine dignity. “At least, not without recording it…”

And with that half-hearted departing shot, he whirled around and stalked out.

As soon as he was gone, Jadzia let out a shaky breath, visibly struggling to keep from collapsing again. She rounded on Dax, so desperate to be angry, but all she could muster was fear and pain and sorrow. Her eyes were bright and wide, and when she summoned the strength to speak, her lips and her voice were trembling.

“You told me it would be over,” she said, gritting her teeth in a desperate bid at keeping herself steady. Dax could tell that she wasn’t really the cause of Jadzia’s frustration, that she was just a convenient target, and she had just enough self-deprecation in her to accept that, to stand back and let herself be hit because it was what Jadzia needed. “You told me—”

“I told you I didn’t know,” Dax said softly, and took a couple of steps towards her, slow and careful. “But if it makes you feel better to yell at me, you can go right ahead.”

Jadzia swallowed. For a moment, it looked like she was going to do exactly that, but she seemed to think better of it, and shrunk in on herself as her shoulders sagged.

“No,” she sighed at last. “It won’t make me feel better.” Dax nodded; she knew from personal experience precisely how true that was. “It’ll probably just make me feel worse.”

That was all the invitation Dax needed to close the remaining space between them. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t need to. She just crouched down, keeping her movements slow, and held out her arms for Jadzia to take or ignore as she saw fit. She recognised all of this far too well, understood too completely the sense of groggy confusion that came after a hallucination, the horror that wouldn’t dissipate until the body had exhausted itself entirely, and the lingering echo of a fury so fierce that it left her feeling burned alive. She remembered all of that, and she saw them again reflected in Jadzia’s face. She saw how pale Jadzia was, how close to losing what little control she’d managed to claw back, and though she knew that she couldn’t make it any easier for her, she could at least offer her a safe haven to hide inside while she rode it out.

Without Sisko there to put on a brave face for, Jadzia let hers crumble. “Why won’t they stop?” she pleaded, and Dax caught her as she fell into her arms. “Why won’t they just _stop_?”

“They will,” Dax promised; the words were empty and untrue, but they were all she had left to offer. “They will stop. It’ll just take some time. Once we get your isoboramine levels stabilised… once we get you…”

“You’re lying,” Jadzia interrupted, voice flat and thin; it wasn’t quite an accusation just yet, but Dax could tell it would become one if she tried to deceive her again. “Why should I believe mine are going to stop when yours haven’t?” Dax opened her mouth to protest, but Jadzia ignored her. “Don’t bother trying to deny it. You just hide them better now, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. You hide them and you tell yourself they’re not really hallucinations any more, and you pretend they’re not still eating you alive. But they are. And if they’re still eating you, what’s stopping them from coming after me?”

Dax shook her head, so desperate to deny it. “Mine did stop,” she insisted automatically.

“No, they didn’t.” Jadzia sighed, and Dax could feel her shaking in her arms. “You just call them dreams now and pretend that somehow makes them different. But they’re not, and we both know it.”

“It is different,” Dax said, voice tight. “It’s completely different. You don’t understand yet, but you will.”

Jadzia pulled back a little, just enough that she could meet her gaze, look deep into her eyes and search for the honesty or the lies there. Dax allowed it, straightening her shoulders and staring right back at her, letting her see beyond all doubt that she wasn’t hiding anything, that she wasn’t shrouding the truth or trying to protect either of them. As tempting as it was to shield her from all of this, from the horrors that they both knew were coming, Dax knew better than to waste their time trying.

Jadzia would go through it all in her own time anyway, and it was important that she be prepared for that. Alternatively, she supposed, the benzocyatic treatments might yet fail, and maybe she would die before she’d ever need to worry about distinguishing between dreams and hallucinations; maybe she’d be unlucky — or lucky, depending on how she looked at it. Ultimately, she supposed, it didn’t matter; either way, coddling her would not help.

“Look,” she said softly. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m not even saying it’s going to be better. But it is going to be different. If you can’t believe anything else, at least believe that. The enemy might still be the same, but the fight will be different.” She pulled her in, pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It will be different. I promise you, it will be different.”

Neither of them spoke for a long time. Jadzia seemed to be waiting for her to elucidate a little more, or at least try to explain what the difference was, but Dax didn’t offer anything more. Now was not the time for that, for clouding their thoughts with convoluted and heavy-handed explanations of things that were easier experienced than explained. They were both too tired, Jadzia worn out from her hallucinatory ordeal, and Dax worn down from the scuffle it had brought.

Her midsection was still sore, bruised over the place where the symbiont lay, and likewise a little higher, marked across her ribs with the imprint of Jadzia’s fist. Her jaw ached too, throbbing in a way that felt just a little too close to pleasant; it reminded her of the Intendant, of the bruises at the base of her neck and on her thighs, the brand of possession. Thinking about it made her feel even more exhausted, drained and weak and terribly guilty, so she turned her attention back to where it was safe, to Jadzia, unpleasantly warm and shaking in her arms.

Jadzia looked even worse than Dax felt, which was a strange kind of comfort in itself. Dax leaned in by pure instinct, smoothing her hair back and wiping the dirt-smudged sweat from the spots at her temples, holding her close and protecting her from her self-inflicted suffering. She didn’t seem to notice her injured wrist at all, but Dax saw the bruise-darkened swelling again, and suspected that something was broken.

“Sorry about that,” she murmured, almost without thinking. Jadzia blinked in confusion, so Dax tilted her head at the injury. “Your wrist. You pulled your knife on me. I, uh… I had to…” She gestured, a meagre imitation of the way she’d twisted it. “I had to. You would have used it on me if I hadn’t. I… I’m sorry.”

Jadzia frowned, glancing down. Her eyes darkened as she took in the damage, as though acknowledging the injury meant having to acknowledge the pain as well, as though the mere sight of it was enough to bring the agony screaming to the forefront. Dax knew from repeated experience that sometimes that was all it took for the shock to wear off and the pain to hit, and she watched with a sympathetic grimace as all the colour drained from Jadzia’s face.

“…oh…” she managed in the half-second before her eyes rolled back.

Dax held her as she started to shake, shock and pain spasming through her limbs as she reeled; it lasted less than a moment, but that was enough. She kept one hand on her back, lifting the other to smooth the hair out of her face, and waited for Jadzia to catch her breath. She was deathly pale, and the swollen bruises on her wrist stood out in bold relief against the pallor of her skin.

“It’s okay,” Dax encouraged, a meagre attempt at comfort. “I’m sorry I had to hurt you like that.”

Jadzia shrugged off the words as soon as she recovered, and wrenched free from the hand still at her back. “I’ve had worse,” she muttered, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her good hand. “Benjamin wouldn’t have been half so apologetic if he’d done it.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Still, Dax felt terrible. “Look, I can make a splint or something. Your captain tells me there aren’t any real medical supplies here, but we can make do. I’ll dig something up.”

Jadzia sighed. Dax could see the waves of pain lash across her face as they hit, and wished that she hadn’t mentioned it at all. “There’s no point,” Jadzia murmured, sounding thoroughly defeated; her voice was steadier than it had been before, but it was still reedy and thin with pain. “People get hurt a lot out here, usually much worse than this.” She looked down sadly at her injured wrist, blanching even paler for a moment or two, then gritting her teeth and pushing through. “But if you’re that worried, I’m sure Smiley or Julian are hoarding painkillers or something. That’ll be enough to get by.”

“I’ll go and get you some,” Dax offered, eager to do something useful.

“Later,” Jadzia blurted out, too quickly. “I can live with it for now. I just need…”

She trailed off, suddenly self-conscious, and Dax gave her a puzzled frown. She was obviously in a great deal of pain, and it struck Dax as more than a little stupid to hold off on something that might lessen it. They both had enough to contend with, and for a long moment she couldn’t understand why Jadzia would deny herself something to make her feel a little better.

One look at her face was explanation enough, though, and all the confusion dissolved in a fresh tide of sympathy. You. That was the word she hadn’t said, and Dax hated her for it.

Even through the threads of pain, Jadzia looked deeply frightened; she looked exhausted too, worn out by her hallucination and the surge of adrenaline that had come and gone with it, but it was the terror that cut Dax to the quick. She knew how badly Jadzia had hoped that the benzocyatizine would be the end of her hallucinations, that she would be miraculously fine as soon as her bloodstream absorbed the first dose; Dax had tried her best to make her see that it didn’t work that way, but Jadzia had been as dogged as anyone she’d ever met, so determined to believe what she wanted to believe, and all the gentle warnings in the world hadn’t been enough to turn her from that impossible hope that Dax really was a magic cure, that just by being here and doping her with medicine she could somehow make everything miraculously all right.

It was a lot of pressure to put on someone who was still pretty close to falling apart herself, and Dax felt the weight of it now more heavily than she ever had before. Jadzia looked scared and angry, upset and betrayed, like she couldn’t quite reconcile the part of her that had convinced itself she would never have another hallucination with the part of her that needed to keep Dax close, to hide in the arms of the woman she had chosen to be her saviour through this, to let Dax protect her from the corners of her mind that neither of them could reach. She didn’t want painkillers because she wanted Dax instead. She didn’t want to give up her embrace for the few minutes it would take to go and get something better.

Honestly, Dax was a little annoyed about that. It was too much to expect of her, too much to hope for, too much of a burden to place on anyone’s shoulders. She’d come here to try and help, and she was doing the best she could, but she couldn’t bear the hope still alight in Jadzia’s eyes, those eyes that were so like her own but still so much darker. She couldn’t bear that hope, and she couldn’t bear the hurt either, the part of her that said _‘lie to me’_ clashing with the part that said _‘why won’t you tell me the truth?’_. She didn’t want the truth, but she could taste the bitterness of the lie, and Dax supposed she could understand that confusion; they were both as bad as each other, and there really was no comfort to be found in either of them.

Still, though, she couldn’t quite keep from resenting the expectations being laid on her, couldn’t keep from flinching when Jadzia shuffled closer to her, from stiffening her back when she demanded answers but didn’t want to hear them, from recoiling when she begged for help but refused to accept that it might not be absolute. She wondered if she would have become so irrational too, if she would have become so desperate and so lost if Benjamin and Julian hadn’t gotten her to Trill and gotten to the bottom of the problem, if she’d deteriorated like Jadzia was. Would she have lost herself to the madness? Would she be enough to stop it from happening to Jadzia?

“How often do you get them now?” she heard herself ask.

Jadzia turned her face away; she was still deathly pale, but a little colour came back to her face as she bristled at the question. “Does it matter?”

“No,” Dax answered, quite honestly. “It doesn’t matter at all. I was just curious, that’s all.” She leaned in, brushed Jadzia’s jaw with the backs of her fingers, guiding her face back so they were looking at each other again. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

They both knew she would, though, and Jadzia shut her eyes as she braced herself for the brutal honesty, the admission that Dax was as afraid to hear as she was to say. “Twice a day, at least,” she sighed. “Sometimes three times. More if I try to sleep.” She opened her eyes, and Dax saw the fear undercut the pain once more. “I’m so tired of them. I’m so damn _tired_ …”

It was an understatement, Dax knew, and shuddered. She couldn’t imagine suffering through so many, so often and so relentlessly. The one she’d had on Deep Space Nine had frightened her so much that she hadn’t mustered even a cursory protestation when Benjamin and Julian had insisted on taking her back to Trill; the thought of the hallucination scared her so much more than the idea of letting down the people who had given her a second chance at becoming joined, and for someone as self-conscious and insecure as Jadzia Dax, that was really saying something.

In truth, she suspected that only Julian had truly understood just how much of a sacrifice it was to go back, how deep the fear must run for her to submit to it so readily. Benjamin certainly didn’t; there was still too much of Curzon in the way he saw her, too much of the old man who had always promised to take his young friend on a visit to his homeworld. Curzon had never been afraid of anything, least of all the Symbiosis Commission, and he certainly wouldn’t have been afraid of going back there. No, that particular qualm had been Jadzia’s own private burden to bear, and as well as Benjamin knew her, he had no idea. But even that little girl’s fear had paled in comparison to the bone-deep terror she felt just thinking of the hallucination that had brought her there.

The second one, if possible, was even worse. It had been unexpected, and that made it so much harder; Dax supposed that was how Jadzia felt now, so sure that she was heading in the right direction, only to be laid low once more by the very thing she was so afraid of. Dax remembered how she’d felt, how optimistic and hopeful, eager and invigorated. She’d felt more like herself than she had in days, so sure that the benzocyatic treatments were the cure, that she would be fine and back to normal in a day or so. It was all so promising, and she’d been so sure it was all behind her… but then, out of nowhere, the second hallucination had hit, and the world had been pulled out from under her. In seven lifetimes, she had never felt so scared.

It was bad enough to know that something was seriously wrong with her, bad enough to feel out of control; without any knowledge of the new consciousness surfacing inside of her, without so much as a rudimentary understanding of why she was hallucinating at all, Dax had felt lost and afraid, confused by all the conflicted feelings, the anger she couldn’t place and the hate that came from nowhere. All of that had been bad enough in itself, but the hallucinations themselves were something else entirely. They were a breed of horror that Dax had never known before, disturbing in a way that even the loss of self-awareness hadn’t matched.

Though she knew now with the benefit of hindsight that they were memories, it did little to stop her pulse from racing as she remembered. It was a cold kind of comfort to know that she’d felt like her psyche was splitting apart because that was precisely what was happening, that she had been quite literally caught between one host’s memories and another’s responses. It had been visceral and intense, and so much worse because it had seemed so real. It had been bad enough to feel those awful things, that roiling rage and feral fury, to yell at her friends and imagine doing awful things… but to truly experience it, to lose every last iota of her own self, to disappear completely into something that felt so familiar even as she didn’t know what it was? To actually become that thing she did not recognise and could not remember? It had crippled her. Both times, and especially the second, it had crippled her.

If Jadzia really was going through all of that two or three times a day, it was a miracle she had any sanity left at all.

A quick scan with the tricorder told them both what Dax already suspected: a minor drop in Jadzia’s isoboramine and a fractured radius from the altercation with the knife. The former, she treated with another shot of benzocyatizine and a few softly murmured placations, both coming almost as second nature by now, and for the latter she tore off strips of her clothing (Jadzia’s clothing, really, which made her feel a little less miserable about ripping them up), and fashioned a splint so primitive and ineffective that she laughed to imagine the look on Julian’s face if he saw it.

Dax knew basic first aid, as all Starfleet officers did, but it was far from her strong point, and the young doctor had delighted in discovering that there was something in the universe that the great Jadzia Dax wasn’t perfect at. She wasn’t entirely sure if he’d be disgusted or simply amused by her efforts at strapping up Jadzia’s wrist, but she supposed it didn’t really matter. Either way, telling Jadzia how horrified he would be if he could see them now distracted them both, keeping Jadzia from focusing on the pain and anxiety and keeping Dax’s own mind focused on more pleasant things.

“He doesn’t sound at all like our Julian,” Jadzia murmured when Dax told her about the time he’d tried (and failed) to teach her how to pop a dislocated shoulder back into its socket. “Our Julian would’ve just left you there to die.”

“Your Julian doesn’t seem like a particularly fun person to spend time with,” Dax quipped, thinking fondly of her friend back on Deep Space Nine, young and naive but good-hearted to a fault. “My Julian is a good man, and a very good friend. He dropped everything to come with me back to Trill…”

Jadzia flinched a little at that, apparently not wanting to be reminded of her lack of good friends or her exile, and Dax gave an awkward little cough, scrabbling to change the subject. She pulled the makeshift bandage tight, wincing empathically as Jadzia sucked in a painful breath, then leaned back to examine her handiwork, such as it was. It didn’t look particularly good, but at least it didn’t look ready to fall apart; in light of the dislocated shoulder incident, Dax considered that a win.

“Thanks,” Jadzia said when she leaned back at last, voice low and soft.

Her eyes were dark and misty, and her lower lip was trembling again. Dax wasn’t sure whether it was the pain in her wrist or the revenant hallucinatory horror that was so affecting her, but it tugged at her heart just the same, awakening the Audrid in her and filling her with an inescapable urge to take her into her arms, to hold her and protect her and keep her safe, to drive back the hallucinations by pure force of will, to build a barricade against all the things that would eat away at her mind, at her sense of identity, at everything she knew and everything she was.

“You should get some rest,” she said, and didn’t miss the flash of fear. “Let your body recuperate a little. I didn’t exactly pull my punches when you got violent, and we both know that you need to keep your strength up. You should take a nap or something. I’ll be right here.”

“No,” Jadzia said quickly. “I don’t want to.”

Dax knew that was code for _‘I’m afraid to’_ , and she sighed heavily. “I really think—”

“I know you do. But I’m fine. I don’t need to rest, and we both know I couldn’t sleep right now even if I wanted to.” Dax conceded that with a grimace, and Jadzia smiled at the little victory. “Don’t you have any more silly Ferengi games you can teach me?”

Dax chuckled. “Well, I suppose there’s always dabo,” she said, mustering a sly little grin that came out rather more forced than natural. “But then I’d feel bad taking all your latinum.”

“You mean ‘rocks’,” Jadzia shot back, eyeing the fractured pieces of makeshift currency Dax had cobbled together before the hallucination had scattered them across the floor. “I think I can afford to lose a few of those.”

“You sure?” Dax asked, and they both knew she wasn’t talking about the rocks.

“I’m sure.” To punctuate the point, Jadzia managed a weak smile, and a little more of the colour came back to her cheeks. “Don’t you worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

Somehow, Dax didn’t believe her.


	26. Chapter 26

Ultimately, it was a wasted effort.

Dax understood Jadzia’s resistance to taking rest, of course. Truth be told, she herself felt exactly the same way most of the time, even when she didn’t have the convenient excuse of hallucinations and unwanted memories to hide behind. She’d never understood people who could just take a nap or switch off their mind, or even take a break from their workload until everything was done and finished and shut down. She didn’t have the time or the patience to indulge that sort of thing, and even if she had, it was more than she could do to hand over her responsibilities to someone who invariably didn’t understand them as well as she did.

More often than she could count, Benajmin found himself ordering her to take a few days off, for fear that she would work until she dropped. She’d sleep when she was dead, she told him time and time again, and both Curzon and Jadzia had made a point of ignored his reminders that death wasn’t much of an obstacle for a joined Trill. By the time Kira had asked her to join her on her little Bajoran pilgrimage, Dax guessed she probably had close to four or five months’ worth of accumulated unused leave.

It was one of the few things that she and Kira had in common, she thought with a pang, and one of the very first things they’d bonded over. Kira was leery of Starfleet officers anyway, belligerent and hyper-defensive of her people and their independence; she and Benjamin had clashed more times than anyone could count in those awkward first few months. She’d been leery of Dax herself, too, both as a Starfleet officer and as a scientist, but where Benjamin had risen to the bait more often than not, Dax had simply laughed off all her derisive comments like they were nothing.

It was true, she’d admitted, time and time again. Starfleet types really were pampered little children, and she’d be the first to concede that she wouldn’t know a hard day’s work if it kicked her in the head. She was free and open, accepting of everything Kira threw at her, and when she made a valid point she would gladly wear it. Kira respected her for that, albeit grudgingly, but far more significantly, she respected her for taking even her pointless Starfleet work seriously. It might be silly, but not even Kira could deny that Dax gave everything she had to every task she was given, and in its own way that had sold her far more readily than all the self-deprecation in the galaxy. Dax enjoyed her free time, such as it was, and she made great use of it. But if she had a job to do, she would let herself collapse from exhaustion before she would leave it undone, and regardless of what she might think of the work itself, Kira admired a strong work ethic.

Once, not too long after they first arrived on the station, when every available system was malfunctioning on a near-daily basis, Dax and Chief O’Brien had worked for three shifts in a row trying to get power back to the Promenade after a system shutdown. Kira had stopped by for a progress report at some point in the early afternoon, and Dax remembered vividly the shock on her face when she saw the state of them. She still shook her head and rolled her eyes and pointed out with her usual abrasiveness that neither of them would last a day on occupied Bajor, but Dax couldn’t help noticing that the derision dropped from her tone after that, replaced by a sort of playful fondness.

The memory sent another jolt of nostalgia through her, a pinpoint-accurate laser blast of pain. _Nerys_ , she thought wretchedly, and _Chief_. Both names hurt in their own way, and Dax felt the twitch in her body almost before Jadzia acknowledged it, looking up with a half-formed question on her lips. Dax forced the reaction down before she could ask. Not in front of Jadzia, she reminded herself, and forced her thoughts back to the present, to the here and the now, to the body taking up space beside her and the broken soul living inside it.

Jadzia was flagging, visibly worn out but determined to keep going until she collapsed, just like Dax herself would have been under the same circumstances. Not for the first time, Dax wondered if she had looked so small, so pathetic when she was the one suffering through this. That night on the _Defiant_ , when she’d crept into Julian’s quarters, when he’d sensed how scared she was and let her stay with him, had she looked like Jadzia did now? Had she been pale and sickly, weakened by the strain, eyes shadowed by fear and features lined by exhaustion? Had he taken pity on her as a friend, or had it been the doctor in him diagnosing that she shouldn’t be left alone in such a fragile state? She would probably never know for sure; she doubted he’d tell her the truth, and if she was honest, she wasn’t entirely sure which option was worse.

Besides, it didn’t really matter. Julian wasn’t here. He wasn’t here to be a friend or a doctor, or anything in between. He wasn’t here at all, and neither was Kira or the chief or even Benjamin. Dax was completely alone here, the only one she could trust in this universe, with only a tricorder and her own instincts to guide her towards the right thing.

They’d killed maybe an hour or so with dabo, far more easily explained than demonstrated, and had moved on — at Jadzia’s dogged insistence — to the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. She was a quick study, Dax had to give her that, and memorised everything she was told with very little trouble. Even in her worn-down state, she had no trouble absorbing anything Dax taught her, and if she wasn’t so annoyed by her feverish determination to drive herself into the ground, Dax would have certainly been impressed. But this was serious, and since she alone had to deal with it, that meant she needed to be serious too.

“Jadzia,” she said, not for the first time.

Knowing perfectly well what was coming, Jadzia’s shoulders slumped in a tired sigh. “I know what you’re going to say,” she muttered. “So you might as well save your breath. The answer is still ‘no’.”

“It’s not a question this time,” Dax told her, willing herself to sound authoritative instead of sympathetic. “We’re long past the point of questions. It’s an order.”

Jadzia pouted. “This isn’t your little ‘Starfleet’,” she muttered with a sullen scowl. “You can’t order me to do anything.”

Dax rolled her eyes. “Would you like me to bring in your captain and make him do it?”

That got the reaction she was hoping. Jadzia’s shoulders stiffened, and her features paled for a second then immediately darkened to a thundercloud. “I don’t need to rest,” she snapped, but didn’t question the order again. “And anyway, even if I wanted to, I can’t. I don’t sleep in the afternoon.”

Dax actually laughed at that, comforted by the familiarity of the excuse. She remembered all too well her own failed attempts at arguing that exact point against the tag-team of Benjamin and Julian when they’d tried to make her rest. Just like Jadzia, all she’d wanted was a distraction, anything to keep from staring up at the ceiling and thinking about all the things that were wrong with her; she’d wanted to run around, to explore, to show off her homeworld to her friends, to do anything she could just to keep herself occupied. Jadzia, it seemed was exactly the same, and in spite of herself Dax felt a warm smile lift her lips. There were so many differences between their respective situations, but in some things they were so alike it was startling.

“You think I’ve not used that one myself?” she asked, shaking her head with a wry chuckle, and called on Julian’s own words to help sell the argument in her favour. “Just lie down, close your eyes, and try not to think.”

Jadzia huffed her annoyance. “You know that doesn’t work,” she said, though it was more of a plea than a statement.

“What I know is that you need to rest,” Dax replied, still trying to channel Julian. “If you think it’ll help, I can give you another shot of benzocyatizine, though I don’t think you need any more right now.” She took a deep breath, steeling herself to say the one thing that neither of them wanted to hear. “And I’ll be right here in case you… in case you need me. You…” She swallowed, and braced herself for the inevitable resistance. “You don’t have to be scared.”

“I’m not scared!” Jadzia snapped, as if on cue.

“And I’m not Benjamin,” Dax reminded her, sharp but understanding. “I’m you, in case you’ve forgotten. I’ve been through the same thing you’re going through, and I know exactly what you’re feeling. So don’t waste your breath and my time trying to deny it. You’re scared out of your mind.”

Jadzia hung her head, visibly ashamed; Dax knew that feeling too, though she didn’t say so out loud. “It’s stupid,” she confessed in a ragged whisper. “It’s stupid to be scared.”

“Maybe in this universe,” Dax said. “But not in mine. In mine, it’s smarter to admit you’re scared of something than to pretend you’re not.”

She didn’t point out that she considered herself the exception to that particular rule, and focused instead on what Julian would say to her in the same situation. Or, better still, what Kira would say to her, with all that world-weary Bajoran superiority that she played so well when she knew she was right about something.

Not that it made a difference, of course. The empathy worked both ways, and Jadzia could see through her just as easily. “Who are you trying to convince?” she demanded. “You’d never admit it either, would you?”

Dax sighed. “I’m not trying to convince you, I’m trying to reassure you. And it doesn’t matter either way. Scared or not, you need to rest. It…” She swallowed, hating herself for the lie but understanding the necessity of it, the need to make Jadzia do what was best for her. “It will help the treatments work faster.”

Jadzia hissed at that, as though sensing the bullshit, the dishonesty. Her eyes flicked to the tricorder, and she squinted a little, as though demanding that the little device give up its secrets to her and tell her whether Dax was telling the truth. Dax, for her part, was suddenly grateful for her counterpart’s illiteracy.

“Fine,” Jadzia conceded at long last, and even that teeth-gritted grudgingness was a huge step up from what Dax had been expecting. “I’ll try. But I’m not making promises.”

“Fair enough,” Dax said, pleased with their progress. “I can stay here, if you want, and look aft— keep an eye on your levels…”

Jadzia glared, bristling by reflex against the aborted implication. “I don’t need you to ‘look after’ me,” she snapped, and Dax recognised the hyper-defensiveness, the part of her that really wanted it juxtaposed with the part that would die before she’d admit to that. “And I’m not afraid. I’m just a little…” She trailed off, wringing her good hand. “I’m just…”

“I know.” Dax touched her shoulder, light and fleeting. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… well, you know. I know what you’re going through. We don’t need to say it if you don’t want to. But I just… you know,it can be comforting sometimes to have someone by your side, someone who knows what’s happening, and who understands how you feel.” She gave Jadzia’s shoulder a squeeze. “Just because you don’t need it doesn’t mean you can’t take some comfort from it.”

Jadzia looked away, but not quick enough to keep Dax from noticing the tears in her eyes. She wondered if she was thinking of her Benjamin, the Sisko of this universe, the calloused captain who could not understand and did not want to, the man she cared about but who didn’t have the time to deal with her ‘goddamn Trill drama’, the man who shared her bed but very little else, the man who had woken to find her hands around his throat and responded not with empathy but with anger. Was she thinking of that man now?, Dax wondered, and felt her heart break to imagine a world where Benjamin Sisko would hurt someone he cared about before he would think to try and help.

She glanced down at the makeshift splint on Jadzia’s wrist, and winced as Jadzia did the same. Dax wondered if she was thinking about that as well, going over it all in her head, questioning how unavoidable the injury really was. She wondered, also, if she would have done the same; if Julian had needed to restrain her after the second hallucination, or if someone other than Quark had been there to catch her after the first, if she’d found herself in the infirmary with a bloody nose or a black eye after either one of them, would she be questioning everything that had happened, everything she’d done and everything they had? 

The look on Jadzia’s face worried her, though, the fear all too potent as it undercut the pain. She was afraid of her, she realised, wondering whether she was opening herself up to suffer the same thing again the next time she had an hallucination afraid that Dax wouldn’t hesitate to break more bones in order to restrain her. Dax opened her mouth to reassure her, to promise that she would never lay a hand on her unless she was truly afraid for either of their safety, but the words wouldn’t come.

After a long moment, Jadzia made the decision for her. “Actually…” she murmured, trying too hard to sound thoughtful instead of fearful. “If you don’t mind, maybe you could go and fetch some painkillers now?”

Dax bit down on the urge to apologise all over again, and forced herself to look away from her wrist, nodding with a watery smile.

“Of course,” she said. “Is is very painful?”

Jadzia shook her head, though her ashen pallor told a very different story. “Just annoying,” she said with false bravado.

Dax sighed; the hitch of her breath was practically an accusation. “I’m really sorry,” she said again, and wished that she could atone for all her horrible deeds with a simple apology.

Predictably, Jadzia shrugged it off, though Dax could tell her heart wasn’t really in it. She really was afraid of her, and the thought made her even more guilty than she already was. Suddenly, she was second-guessing the moment too, going over the incident over and over again in her mind, warping the facts until the truth of it bore no resemblance whatsoever to what she remembered, until she saw herself with the knife in her hand and Jadzia helpless and tiny underneath her as she twisted—

“Don’t worry about it,” Jadzia said, ripping through her thoughts like a laser tool.

Dax swallowed her own fear, stared at the reflection of it in Jadzia’s face. “Are you sure?” she managed.

“I’m sure.” Jadzia sighed. “But I really would like a painkiller, if you could…”

Dax touched her arm, tender and tentative, and smiled when Jadzia did not flinch away. “I’ll go find one.”

It shouldn’t have surprised her in the least that Sisko would have a word or two to say to her. His face was hard as stone when she stepped out into the main cavern and though she made a point of trying to ignore him as she picked a path through the scattered gathering of rebels, she knew better than to expect that he’d let her succeed. She was on the lookout for Bashir, hoping to avoid a confrontation, but he cornered her before she’d even made it halfway into the room, eyes glittering like onyx under the shady underground lighting.

He at least had the decency to drag her away before laying into her, apparently not wanting to cause a scene in front of his men. He hauled her out to the mouth of the cave, out of earshot and out of range for anyone to help. That was just fine as far as she was concerned; she doubted anyone but Jadzia would have defended her anyway, and she’d gladly cut off her own chances if it meant cutting off his. She felt a little exposed and more than a little vulnerable, but she’d played enough games of chance against enough Ferengi hustlers to recognise when poor odds were better stacked against all the players equally.

“What do you want?” she demanded, keeping her expression cool and her voice even, like they were talking about the weather.

Sisko, ever the gentleman, responded by shoving her against the wall and pinning her with his whole body.

There was nothing suggestive in the way he moved, nothing implicit or dangerous at all; he was holding her down with his chest and his limbs simply because they were his strongest parts, clearly worried that she’d take her cues from his lover and assault him if he gave her an opening. Whatever softness he might feel for Jadzia were certainly not mirrored in her, and that also bolstered Dax’s confidence some. He was clearly afraid for his own neck, worried that she would skin him alive if she managed to break free, and determined not to let that happen. As aggravated as she was at the manhandling, Dax couldn’t help thinking that it put the odds rather in her favour; he was the one who was afraid, not her, and that meant she had at least some of the power.

“If you ever touch her like that again…” he started, but Dax cut him off before he could finish the threat.

“No.” She had no intention of being intimidated, and she let it show; he was holding her down because she was letting him, and she made damn sure that he knew it. “You don’t get to threaten me. I’m here as your guest, remember? So shut up and listen, because I’m not her, and if you screw with me, you’re going to get a hell of a lot more than just a slap. I’m here to help, and if you get in my way again, then you’ll answer to her when I get up and walk out on both of you.”

Sisko growled, shifting to try to raise a fist while still holding her down. “You’d better—”

“Shut up,” she snapped, and to both of their surprise, he did. “I’m serious, you loud-mouthed bastard. I’m here to help her. I’m here because you asked me to help her. So either you let me help her, like you brought me here to do, and stay the hell out of my way while I do it… or I’m out of here, and you’ll be left on your own to explain why the one person she trusts to get her through this thing is gone. Your choice.”

Sisko barked a vicious laugh. “You’d better not build your pedestal too high,” he said, snapping his teeth in a futile bid at unnerving her. “Someone might get it into their head to push you off.”

“I don’t build pedestals,” Dax shot back pointedly. “And, frankly, I don’t give a damn what stupid ideas you get into your head about me. Whatever your precious ego might want to believe, I’m not here for you. I’m here for Jadzia, and she likes me. She trusts me and she feels safe with me, and we’re going to need both of those things if we’re going to get her through this in one piece. Now, if you can’t understand that — hell, if you don’t want to take five minutes to even try and understand it — that’s just fine by me. You do what you want, it’s your loss. But I am not going to stand quietly in a corner and let you turn it into her loss too. She deserves better than that, and she sure as hell deserves better than you.”

“I should kill you for that,” he said flatly. “And don’t think for one second that I couldn’t.”

“I don’t care if you could. You won’t.” She looked him square in the eye, unfaltering and unafraid even as she was the one pinned to the wall, and bared her teeth. “You might run this ragtag little rebellion, Captain, but you don’t run me. Do you understand?”

For a long moment, Sisko just stared at her. Dax half-expected him to punch her for her arrogance, to reclaim his shrunken manhood while he still had her pinned down. At the very least, she expected another threat, but that didn’t come either. No threats, no fists, nothing. He just stared, half-gaping, like he’d never seen her before, like he was seeing her for the first time. He was sharing a bed with someone who looked just like her, but he was looking at her now as though he’d never seen her face before in his life. It was unsettling, but just a little bit empowering as well; she had him off-balance, and he didn’t even have enough fight left in him to hide it.

As the moment stretched on, she found herself starting to wonder if maybe he was thinking of trying to kiss her instead, if he was seeing a little too much of the other Jadzia in her, the same fire and fury, the same stubborn refusal to take any of his crap. Maybe he was seeing her for the first time as _Dax_ , weighing up his chances of surviving if he tried something untoward. But he didn’t do that either, or anything else, and as the seconds passed without a word from either of them, she realised she had no idea what the hell he was really thinking.

At long last, he took a step back. There was still very little space between them, not even enough for her to step away from the wall without pushing right up against him again, so she stayed where she was, but at least she had a little room to breathe now. He narrowed his eyes, like he was sizing her up, and she couldn’t quite figure out whether his expression was that of a wrestler trying to psyche out his opponent or a butcher eyeing his next cut of meat.

“You’re not very bright on that side, are you?” he said after a very long silence; his voice was low, grating and she was sure he meant the words as an insult, but all she felt was amused. She laughed, and so did he. “Well, at least you’re gusty, I suppose.”

“Gutsy enough that you should watch your step,” Dax said.

He cocked his head at that, smiling that same disarming grin that he’d shot Kira back on the runabout before all this started. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him; something in the way tilted his head made him look so much like her Benjamin that it stole her breath. Something about the creases at the corners of his eyes, the way the light caught his teeth as he flashed them, even just the angle he looked at her from. For just a single fractured moment, he was her Benjamin completely, and it took her a long moment to recover, to catch her breath and remember that he wasn’t.

“Why are you so hyper-defensive about all of this, anyway?” she demanded, grateful for the sound of her own voice to counteract the momentary disorientation. “Wasn’t it your idea to cross over and bring me out here in the first place? What the hell have I done to make you think it was a bad idea? What the hell have I done to piss you off, except everything she’s asked of me? I’ve risked my neck for that woman of yours, in more ways than I can count, so why the hell—”

“I know exactly what you’ve done.” he snarled, sounding almost wounded. “Don’t you think she tells me all the time? Hell, you’re the only thing she does talk about! When she’s not trying to kill me, that is…” His eyes gleamed, watching her for a reaction, then hissed when she didn’t give him one. “Little bitch didn’t tell you about that, did she?”

Dax smiled. “Actually, she did.”

Sisko’s eyes narrowed back to slits as he frowned, and Dax was sure she caught a spark of jealousy in their blackened depths. “Figures,” he muttered. “You’re her new best friend. Figures she’d tell you everything, even if it’s none of your damn business.”

“Actually—”

“Oh, shut up.” He waved a hand, dismissing anything she was going to say and bringing things right back around to himself again. “It was bad enough with the Intendant, you know. Your friend the major fell out of the sky, and suddenly nothing else was good enough for her. Suddenly, people like me were out of favour. Suddenly, that dolled-up little hussy from your universe was the only thing she wanted… and the next thing I know, I’m the leader of a damn rebellion! How is that fair?”

He punched the wall, about half a metre or so from Dax’s head, and hard enough that she felt the vibration through the rock. “Careful,” she said, before she could stop herself and realise it was a stupid thing to say.

“Right,” he grunted. “Wouldn’t want you to break a nail, would we?” He swore, but steered himself back to the matter at hand. “So I put all that crap behind me. I move on. And I’m doing damn good work out here in the middle of nowhere, cleaning up the mess your major left behind… only it’s not over, is it? Because all of a sudden, you show up.” Dax opened her mouth to point out that he was the one who’d brought her here, but he didn’t give her the chance to say it. “And all of a sudden, all over again, all I’m hearing is all the crap that you’d do but I wouldn’t.”

Dax allowed herself the luxury of a smile, thin and acerbic. “Maybe if you did, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation.”

That was the last thing Sisko wanted to hear. “You better watch that mouth of yours,” he growled, looking like he desperately wanted to punch the wall again.

“Or what?” Dax countered, entirely unaffected. “You’ll send me back to where I came from? Go right ahead. I’m sick of this hellhole.”

That stopped him in his tracks, at least for a moment, though he was clearly tempted by the idea. She could tell that it was only his feelings for Jadzia keeping him in check, forcing him to cull his temper and at least try to be civil, afraid that she would make good on her threats to leave. That in itself was a comfort of sorts; though he was nothing like the Benjamin Sisko that Dax knew, it seemed there was still just enough of him to do what was right before he would do what his ego compelled him to do.

Maybe he really did care more than he wanted her to believe; it wasn’t Dax’s place to judge either of them, Jadzia for her choices or Sisko for his callousness, but she still found it comforting to see even a meagre shred of affection in him. Whatever he and Jadzia might think of each other, however cool their relationship might be when they put their clothes back on, Sisko must care at least a little to hold his temper in check against someone as antagonistic as Dax just because he knew how important it was for Jadzia that she stick around.

Still, though, he was very much a proud man, and he had no intention of letting her best him quite so easily. He pulled back his lips in a dangerous snarl, glaring for a moment, then lifted them into a sadistic little grin.

“So…” he murmured, voice rising with the calculated malice of someone who had found the perfect weak spot. “How is she?”

Dax had a sneaking suspicion that the question wasn’t nearly as innocuous as it sounded, and she tightened her shoulders as she considered her answer. “She’s doing just fine,” she said after a moment. “You know that she had another hallucination, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Are you really that stupid?” he said, cutting her off with a wave of his hand. “I’m not talking about Jadzia, you idiot. I know how she is. I sleep with her, for God’s sake. I’m talking about _her_.” Discomfort settled in Dax’s stomach, but still she feigned ignorance, forcing him to say the name aloud. “The _Intendant_.” He smirked his satisfaction as she flinched, fighting back tremors. “How is the sadistic little tyrant?”

Though she’d known it was coming, Dax still felt the cut of it, mind suddenly flooded with things she didn’t want to remember. Beautiful Bajoran eyes forged in fire. Rough touches branded on soft skin. A familiar voice shaping unfamiliar words. Violence and hatred and the taste of sex and bloodwine, sweat beading on skin and unbearable heat. Shallow cuts, bone-deep bruises, long limbs tangled in drenched sheets. _Nerys, Nerys, Nerys…_

She swallowed it all down, refused to let Sisko see it. “How the hell should I know?” she demanded, a little too aggressively, trading in anguish for anger, painful memories for safer fabrications. “I barely even spent five minutes with her. I got in, got what I wanted, and got the hell out of there. Do you really think we sat around chatting about the weather?”

Sisko laughed humourlessly at that, and leaned back in. There was less intimidation in him now, and more urgency, a strange sincerity that didn’t fit the smirk still twisting his features. His body was just as strong and solid as it had been a moment before, but it held none of the tension; by his standards, she supposed he was being practically accommodating, no longer pinning her to the wall but leaning in for the privacy to share his secrets.

“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” he asked in a low hiss, and that wasn’t a threat either; it was a reminder, and his tone was probably as close to friendly as it was capable of getting. “I was her favourite toy for a long time before your precious Major Kira showed up and blew it all to hell. I know exactly what she’s like, and if you really expect me to believe that she just sat back and let you saunter in, steal some Trill mojo, and run off again, you’re even more of an idiot than I thought you were.” He leaned back a fraction of an inch, just far enough to rake his eyes over her body. “And that’s really saying something.”

Dax turned her face away, pressed her cheek against the rock wall, tried to take in as much of the cold as she could. “What does it matter?” she demanded moodily. “What does it matter what I did? What does it matter how she is? What does any of it matter?” She turned back, spread her arms wide. “You’re here now, safe and free and out of reach, and she’s still there just like she’s always been. And one day you’ll go over there too, and if you’re lucky you’ll kill her, just like she’s killing your people every single day… and if you aren’t so lucky, she’ll kill you. Either way, you won’t have to worry about her any more. Whatever the hell you had when you were her ‘toy’, it’s over now. So why the hell do you care how she is?”

Sisko’s body shifted against her as he shrugged, as close to suggestive as he’d ever ventured with her, though he was still smart enough not to cross that line.

“Maybe I just wanted to see how you’d react,” he said with a shrug. She studied his face, and was surprised by the depth of empathic honesty she saw there, a strange contrast to his usual unwarranted aggression. “She’s a monster. She’s twisted and screwed up, and she’ll do anything she can to make sure anyone who comes near her is as twisted and screwed up as she is. Maybe she thinks that’s poetic justice or something, I don’t know. Whatever.” He paused for a moment, shrugging again, then pressed on with quiet severity. “The point is, sweetheart, I know exactly what that bitch like, and I know it a whole lot better than our innocent little Jadzia does. Believe me.”

Dax did believe him. She remembered Jadzia’s words when she’d first pitched the idea, warning Dax that she would probably have to get her hands dirty. Dax had naturally assumed that she knew what that meant, that the undertones were perfectly clear. They’d both thought they understood. A little tender talk, a little rough sex, what was the big deal? Over the course of seven lifetimes, Dax had seen and done and endured much worse, and to the newly-discovered eighth, it was not even a blip on the radar. Sure, it wouldn’t be pleasant, and it probably wouldn’t be easy, but it was what it was. She knew what she was getting into, and Jadzia knew what she was preparing her for. They’d both thought so, anyway, both so sure that they knew everything, but the truth was, they didn’t know a damn thing.

Sisko knew, though. He’d known from the beginning. He’d known how woefully unprepared Dax was; maybe he’d even known how woefully innocent Jadzia was. The whole time she was readying herself for what she thought she understood, he’d known that she didn’t, and he hadn’t said a single word about it.

All of a sudden, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to push off from the wall, throw him down to the floor and beat him senseless, to drive her fists through that savage smile until it fell off his face, until that manic laughter died on his lips, until she tore apologies from them instead. She wanted to beat her experiences out of him, to shut off the memories by swelling his eyes shut, to black out those twisted parts of her by making him black out completely. She wanted to make him hurt for all the hurt she’d suffered, all the hurt he hadn’t had the decency to warn her about.

A small part of her wondered if this was Joran again, if he was driving her to hate where she should be shrugging it off and sauntering away. Maybe it was, but if so he was getting better at integrating with her. The rage felt so natural, so organic, that the idea of it being forced didn’t make any sense; it breathed in perfect rhythm with her heartbeat, hummed like music in her head, and though she knew that that in itself was a warning sign (like music? when did any Dax host ever think in music before he came along?) she didn’t particularly care. Right then, in that moment, she simply did not care. She had so many reasons to be angry, and it had been such a struggle until this point to feel anything at all; what did she care who was to blame now that she finally could?

Something of the rage must have shone through in her face, because Sisko took a couple of hasty steps back. She’d made no move against him, but he gave her some space just the same, rubbing the side of his face as though in memory of Jadzia’s rough touches as he leaned in against the wall and studied her closely, lips thinning out into a sly smile.

“You people,” he murmured, voice low and secretive. “You people on your side. You’re all idiots, do you know that? You’re all so intent on getting things done, so blind and focused on seeing results and getting answers and whatever the hell else, you don’t see what’s right in front of you. All your ‘do this’ and ‘do that’ and ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ and God knows what else, and you just don’t think think. All that free time you have over there, all the luxuries you take for granted, and you can’t afford to waste a few goddamn minutes to stop and think?”

Dax laughed. “Really?” she countered. “ _You’re_ calling _me_ out on not thinking?”

“You’re damn right I am,” he shot back, teeth flashing. “Your friend the major didn’t think either, and I’m still cleaning up the mess she made. She was here for five lousy minutes and she did more damage than the Intendant did in five years. And you…” He shook his head, and Dax recoiled, feeling the guilt surge up to swallow the rage whole, and closed her eyes against the sudden weakness as Sisko pressed on. “You don’t think either. Neither of you do, but you’re even worse than she is. You’ll climb up onto your white horse just so you can look like a hero for my sweet Jadzia, then you’ll go riding off to slay the dragon for her and not even stop to think that your shining armour isn’t going to protect you when the damn thing breathes its fire all over you.”

Dax swallowed. “I don’t…”

“Sure you don’t. Keep telling yourself that.” He narrowed his eyes, calculating and very cruel. “Does she have any idea?”

Dax rolled her eyes. She had lived through eight lifetimes of conflicted pronouns, but this was getting too complicated even for her. “Does who have any idea about what?”

“Jadzia.” His smile softened just a little at his lover’s name, and Dax felt oddly heartened to see the affection in him. It didn’t quite tame the heat in her chest, anger made impotent by guilt, but it loosened her fists a little where they hung limp and lame at her sides. “Does my sweet, lovely Jadzia have any idea how badly our friend the Intendant screwed you up?” He tapped the side of his head, then leaned even further in, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Does she have any idea that the kind-hearted mirror-image she’s so madly in love with is barely hanging on by a thread? Does she have any idea how close you are to losing your pretty little mind?”

“You underestimate me,” Dax said, but her voice cracked on the last crucial syllable. “It takes more than your ‘friend’ the Intendant to screw me up. I did what I had to do for the woman you should have been protecting yourself, and I don’t regret a damn thing.”

 _Really?_ Her doubts had Keiko’s voice, and the ringing clarity of it almost drove her down to her knees. _You really don’t regret anything? Nothing at all? Not even me?_ Dax tried to close her eyes, but it did nothing to silence the voice, the accusation, the pain. _How cold of you…_

 _How cold of you,_ her confidence echoed, as smooth as silk and sounding just like Joran. _How cold, but how clever. You’ve come such a long way, little girl, and I couldn’t be prouder…_

Dax squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, forcing herself not to think about either of them. She was so angry, so heartbroken, so furious, so frightened, so guilty and so ashamed. She was so many things, a cavalcade of endless emotions all slipping through her fingers before she could grasp any one of them. She clenched her jaw until it ached again, taking comfort in the dull pain, the strain and the soreness, the understated reminder that she was still strong enough to hold those things inside.

“Listen to me,” Sisko was saying; his voice was as quick as a whip and just as ruthless. “I don’t care what that psychotic little bitch did to you. I don’t care what happened. I don’t care if you’re playing it tough just for my benefit, and I don’t care if you really are stupid enough to believe you’re handling it just fine all on your own. I don’t care what you think or what you do or how you feel. Plain fact is, I don’t care about you at all.” Dax opened her mouth, but as usual he cut her off before she could even start. “You can tell yourself all the pointless lies you want to help you sleep at night, or you can lie awake tossing and turning and crying yourself crazy. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. But if my Jadzia gets hurt again because you can’t keep your shit together, then mark my words: getting back to your worthless little universe will be the least of your problems.” He leaned back an inch or two, just far enough for her to see all his teeth as he leered. “You hear me?”

“I can keep my shit together just fine,” Dax told him, though she was rather more desperate to believe it herself than she was to convince the man who shared her best friend’s face. “Are we done here?”

“The hell we are.” He took her by the collar and shook her until her head snapped back and struck the wall. “This may be all a big game to you, but it means something to her. You mean something to her, and if you can’t give her what she needs, then it’ll be better for all of us if you just turn around now and go back to where you came from. I’d sooner deal with her disappointed than see you kill her with your stupidity.”

Dax slapped him. “You know, I might actually buy that crap you’re selling if you’d spent even one minute trying to understand what she’s going through.”

“I understand enough,” he countered. “Hell, I understand it better than—”

This time she punched him, bare-knuckled and hard enough that the _crack_ cut through the air and sent him staggering back, nursing his jaw. “If you even think of finishing that sentence,” she said, “I will do things to you that will make you wish you’d stuck with the Intendant.”

The voice might have been hers, but the words were entirely Joran’s, and for perhaps the first time she found that she didn’t mind at all. If it would make this bastard who called himself Benjamin Sisko understand the scope of what his lover was going through, if it could startle or frighten him into accepting that he had done her far more harm than good by neglecting her and then passing off her care to someone else, if it would make him see just how worthless he really was in all this, then it was all for the best. She was done fighting Joran, she thought; she had an important point to make, and if he could make it more effectively than her, then so be it. She didn’t have the time or the energy to flounder with words, not when she was staring down a hot-head who only understood action.

Anyway, it had the desired effect on Sisko. The self-satisfaction on his face was gone now, replaced by pain and anger, and just enough fear to still his tongue before he pushed her any further.

“And I thought _she_ had a temper,” he muttered, in lieu of a real insult, and Dax felt a sharp kick in her chest at the memory of her Benjamin Sisko telling her the exact same thing about Curzon.

“Is that all?” she demanded, tired and upset.

He took another long step backwards, and gestured expansively back into the cave. “Even if it wasn’t, I’m done now,” he grunted, as gracious a defeat as she supposed she could expect from him. “My face is too damn pretty to get messed up by the likes of you.”

“Then keep it away from me,” she shot back, and stormed past.

Her legs were weak and shaky, barely able to hold her upright as she stumbled back inside. Her whole body felt like a lit fuse, shivering uncontrollably in one moment and solid as stone in the next. It was hard to try and breathe, harder still to try and think, but in the end neither breath nor thought really mattered because it was all she could do to keep from being overwhelmed by one of the countless emotions swimming around inside of her. Fear, rage, sorrow, hate, pain, guilt… all of them, one at a time but seemingly without any kind of order or logic; she thought of the Intendant and felt sad, thought of Keiko and felt angry, and when she looked up at Sisko her chest hurt. Where she expected to be driven to her knees by guilt, instead she felt furious, and where she expected the hatred to surge all she felt was shame. It didn’t make any sense. 

Back in the main chamber, Sisko reeled away, cornering a couple of his rebel underlings and dragging them aside for an impromptu brainstorming session. No doubt he wanted to soothe over his grazed ego by bossing around his minions, and Dax had no intention of intervening there; they could take care of themselves, and were no doubt long accustomed to their leader’s fits of temper. For her part, she was just grateful for a bit of peace and quiet, and the freedom to do what she’d come out here for in the first place. Her head throbbed with feeling, sentiment and sensation, so many things she didn’t want to deal with, and she forced it all aside in deference to her responsibilities. She was here for Jadzia, she reminded herself, over and over again, until the chaos of feeling subsided and gave her room to breathe.

Grateful, she squinted through the throng of faces, both familiar and unfamiliar, catching her breath as she tried to find Julian.

In a stroke of characteristically bad luck, the chief found her first.

The sight of him — Miles O’Brien, in face and in name — was almost enough to tear her heart out, so potent was the pain. For a moment that lasted a lifetime, all she could think of was Keiko. The man who stood across from her, one arm raised in a cautious half-wave, looked nothing like the friendly chief of operations she knew so well, but his face was identical, and it was all she could do as she looked at him to keep from falling to her knees and begging him to forgive her.

It was ridiculous, she knew. This man, this ‘Smiley’ O’Brien, had never met Keiko Ishikawa, and he had certainly never married her. Even if they had crossed paths in some distant past back on Terok Nor, what was the likelihood that he would even remember her at all after everything that had happened? Kira and Julian’s appearance in this universe had thrown the place into complete disarray, and though Dax knew in her heart that Smiley’s unfortunate future had probably been determined by forces beyond her control, still she couldn’t look into the weary-worn lines on his face without imagining that he was the man she knew, that the woman who had died really was his beloved Keiko.

 _I killed your wife,_ she thought. _Why are you looking at me like that, like nothing’s wrong, like everything’s just the same as it always was? Why are you looking at me at all? I killed your wife. I killed your wife!_

“Everything all right?” he asked, and the open expression on his face broke her heart all over again. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something. I know the captain can be pretty frightening, but he’s all bark and no bite, I promise…”

“Chief,” Dax managed weakly, then forced herself to say the name that so eluded her. “Uh. I’m sorry. I mean… ‘Smiley’, was it?”

“That’s what the captain calls me,” he acknowledged with a noncommittal grunt that implied he didn’t think very much of the name, or the man who gave it to him.

“Smiley,” she said again. “I’m sorry, I…”

She trailed off, shaking her head. Though she knew in her heart that he wasn’t really the chief, that he had no real connection to the Keiko who had died on Terok Nor, it still hurt like hell to look him in the eye, to look at the face she knew so well, the warm eyes — even hardened as they were by this wretched place — of the man she’d lost countless hours working beside. It still hurt to make the connection, even if it was just inside her own head, to see him and think of her, to remember the happy and beautiful family she had left behind in her old familiar universe. It hurt to wonder what might have been, and it hurt to know what never would.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again, and wished he would understand why.

O’Brien frowned. “What are you sorry for?” he asked, expression flickering between worry and discomfort, as though he wasn’t sure whether she’d done something that he didn’t want to know about or simply lost her mind. “You haven’t done anything to me…” He narrowed his eyes. “…have you?”

“No, I…” Dax swallowed hard. “It’s just… you reminded me of a…”

His features softened, as though her convoluted mumbling was all the explanation he needed. “You know I’m not him, right?” he pressed gently. “This ‘chief’ fellow from your side. Your doctor friend told me all about him when he was here. Married with kids…”

“A kid,” Dax corrected softly, voice thick and pain rising up in her throat. “Just one. Molly. A little girl. She’s…”

“Right, right.” He shrugged off the clarification, like he didn’t care at all. “Well, I don’t have any. And I don’t want any, either. And ‘chief of operations’, all that fancy nonsense….” He shook his head, as though he couldn’t imagine such a thing. “What would I do with a title like that in a place like this?” He barked a humourless laugh. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m nothing like him. So whatever you might have done to your ‘chief’, it’s no skin off my nose.”

Dax nodded. “I know,” she managed.

It felt like a lie, though, and she still couldn’t bring herself to look at him, couldn’t bear to see his face, his eyes, the flattened curls on his head. She still couldn’t keep from thinking of the potential future that he might have had, how Keiko might have changed that surliness, opened his mind to the idea of kids, to the thought of fatherhood, to becoming a family man and loving every minute of it. Dax had ruined that for him, deprived him of the chance, however slim, to be happy with a woman who could give him so much more than he believed he deserved.

Apparently sensing her discomfort, O’Brien gave an awkward cough, looking like he would sooner be anywhere else in the galaxy. “Can I get you something?” he asked, though Dax could tell he was rather more eager to be free of her than he was to actually help. “Some water, maybe? Or something to eat? I think we’ve got some blankets stashed in the back if you’re cold…”

“No.” Dax was so busy struggling to get her reactions under control that she had almost forgotten about Jadzia, still waiting for her painkillers, and she reached out with feverish urgency as it came back to her, stopping O’Brien in his tracks as he made to move off. “Wait! I mean, yes. Sorry.”

He quirked a brow. “Okay…”

Dax grimaced. “She… I mean, I… that is, we…” He stared blankly at her, clearly not sure whether to be amused or worried, and Dax balled her fists with self-directed frustration, floundering to get the words out. “I don’t suppose you have any painkillers?”

O’Brien (no, _Smiley_ ) blinked. “I’m sure we’ve got something lying around somewhere,” he said with a shrug. “You got a headache?”

“Oh, no,” Dax said quickly. “No, it’s not for me. It’s… well… there was a… that is… she…”

It was a tricky situation, she realised belatedly. In truth, she wasn’t sure how much of Jadzia’s condition was public knowledge, much less whether Sisko would appreciate Dax telling everyone about it. More, she was almost certain that he wouldn’t want his minions to know that she’d kind of accidentally broken his precious lover’s wrist. Bad enough that she’d done it at all; if he found out she’d been telling people about it, there was no doubt in her mind that he’d assume she was bragging, and that wouldn’t end well for either of them.

“It’s nothing serious,” she managed at last. “It’s just… that is, she’s just… well, I mean, it’s not really a…” Exasperated, she threw up her hands. “Look, never mind. It’s really not important, and we’re wasting time chatting about it. Do you have something or not?”

Smiley raised his hands in self-defence, staring at her as though she’d just threatened his manhood. “All right, all right. I was just asking, that’s all. Wait here, and I’ll see what I can dig up for you.” He shook his head as he moved off, grumbling huffily under his breath. “And I thought the other one was a handful…”

While she waited for him to come back, Dax struggled to catch her breath, or at least to reclaim some shred of her self-control. She hated herself for being so weak, so unable to tell the difference between two very different men just because they wore the same face. She wished that Smiley could be more like Sisko, so fundamentally different to the man she knew that it would be impossible to mistake one for the other. She looked at this universe’s Sisko and saw a complete stranger, but when she looked at Smiley O’Brien, bright-eyed and helpful even in a place as desolate as this, all she could see was the chief.

But then, of course, it wasn’t just him, was it? She had the same problem with Jadzia, too, still seeing so much of herself in her, so much of the little girl she had fought so hard to get away from, so much of the old man who had gone before her, so much of all the hosts Dax had ever known, even Joran. She saw too much of everything in her, and that meant she felt too much as well. The longer she stayed in this place, the harder it would get; she knew that, but it cut like a blade against her palm to think of leaving.

It had been the same with the Intendant too, she thought bitterly, and she was nothing like the Kira she knew. Dax loathed the Intendant, hated her with all the violence that was Joran’s and all the righteousness that was Jadzia’s; she hated everything she did, everything she was, every part of her, and she had damn good reason to. She supposed she should thank her for that; the Intendant was the first person Dax had allowed herself to truly hate since Joran, the first person she had indulged him with and survived. In its own twisted way, her undeniable evil had helped Dax deal with her own issues more thoroughly than a lifetime of counselling ever could.

And yet, that hatred hadn’t stopped her from taking that final tumble. That undeniable evil hadn’t stopped her from taking those four steps to the bed when she’d only needed two to get to the door. And none of those vast and terrible differences had stopped her from whispering _“Nerys”_ when she came.

Everything had become a blur. Names, faces, identities, everything. It was hard enough when the chaos was just inside of her, when all she’d had to worry about was keeping herself afloat in the sea of hate and violence, the ocean of Joran and everything he made her feel. It was hard enough when the only identities in play were her own, when all she’d needed to think about was herself, her thoughts and her breathing, all the little things that kept her alive and reminded her of who she was, hard enough when all she needed to worry about was what terrible things she would do in her dreams, when the only people she could really hurt were holographic Klingons, when she was safe in her own universe with her own people, hiding from them as surely as she was hiding from herself. That alone had been hard enough, but what about now?

How could she be expected to deal with this — this universe, these people, all of it — when she couldn’t even deal with that? How could she hope to keep Smiley O’Brien separate from the chief, to hold in her head the difference between two women named Keiko who looked and sounded and were the same? How could she look at the Intendant and not see Nerys? How could she be expected to cut through the clouds and the clamour of all those conflicted identities, when she still couldn’t find a purchase on her own? Everyone here was someone else. Even she herself was someone else, and it was all she could do just to remember who she was, much less who she was dealing with in a given moment.

Truthfully, the only one of them who made any of sense at all by this point was Jadzia. Jadzia, who was the reason she’d come here in the first place. Jadzia, who shared her face and her voice and her thoughts, who shared her experiences and suffered as she had suffered. Jadzia, who needed her, who wanted her, who was her. Jadzia, who made more sense than Dax herself did right now.

Her head ached. She wanted to weep for Keiko, for O’Brien, for a Molly that would never exist here. She wanted to jump into a sonic shower and wash herself clean of the Intendant’s touch, trying not to think of Kira as she scrubbed her skin until it was raw and bleeding. She wanted to wrap Jadzia in her arms and tell her that she would survive, to stand up and show them both what survival looked like. She wanted to punch Sisko in the face and then laugh about it with her friend Benjamin. She wanted to do so many different things, with so many different versions of the same people. She wanted so much, but it was all so chaotic, so confused, so discordant. Her head ached, and she was so tired she couldn’t think straight.

She had to leave, she realised, and hated herself for it. This place would eat her alive if she didn’t.

She remembered what Jadzia had said about her hallucinations, how they’d devoured her but left her alive, how they hadn’t even had the decency to let her die. If Dax stayed here any longer, that would happen to her too. She wouldn’t die, but she wouldn’t be really alive, either. She’d lose what tiny shred of self she still had left. She would lose, and she would drown, but she’d still be breathing. She’d still have her traitorous heart and her straining lungs, still live and breathe and think (and wasn’t that the very worst part? all that thinking?), but she wouldn’t be whole.

 _“I was prepared to die”_ , Jadzia had said. _“I was prepared to die, but I wasn’t prepared to go crazy”_.

The words resonated again now with renewed clarity, and as Dax let herself remember the fear in those ice-blue eyes, she let herself understand what would happen to her if she stayed here. Maybe she wouldn’t die, but she would go crazy. She had seen death in this place, and she had seen madness too, and for the first time, she truly understood the difference. For the first time, she saw the depth of Jadzia’s loss, the torture of suffering through it all alone. For the first time, she felt the shackles of this place, and saw them for what they were. For the first time, she was not afraid of being destroyed, but of being broken. For the first time…

For the first time, she envied Keiko Ishikawa.


	27. Chapter 27

“It’s not much, I’m afraid.”

Dax blinked, shaking the confusion out of her head. She’d been so caught up in her mental meanderings that she hadn’t even noticed O’Brien — _Smiley_ — crossing back to her, a small hypospray in hand and a sober look on his face. She tried to summon a smile as he handed the hypo over, but all she could manage was a weak and miserable grimace.

“I’m sure it’ll be just fine,” she forced out, willing herself to stop thinking and focus on the task at hand. “Like I said, it’s not really very serious, so…”

“If it’s really not serious, maybe you should save that stuff,” he observed, looking suddenly guarded. “We’re not exactly in the path of any supply lines, and who knows what the Alliance will throw at us before we have a chance to restock. If you can afford to do without…”

Dax winced. She wasn’t sure what left a more unpleasant taste in her mouth, the idea of wasting the rebels’ precious resources on something that could have been avoided, or the fact that this, like every other tragedy that had befallen this place since her arrival, was entirely her fault. _Another stupid mistake,_ she thought with a heavy heart. _Another stupid mistake, and another room full of people who are going to suffer because of it._ When would it end? When would she stop doing stupid things and causing pain in places she couldn’t heal? When would she stop making things worse every time she tried to make them better?

Part of her knew that she was being unfair to herself. For once, the mistake wasn’t her own. For once, the pain she’d inflicted wasn’t entirely her fault. Jadzia had been in the throes of an hallucination, a kind of possession; she’d been unstoppable except by force, and Dax knew that. She wouldn’t have hurt her if there had been any other alternative, and even if there had been she hadn’t exactly had the time to find one. She clung to that truth with everything she had in her, and let it sustain what meagre self-esteem she still had left. If she couldn’t believe in anything else, she had to believe in that, had to believe there was still enough of what was right inside her that she would have held back if she could.

She remembered her own hallucinations all too well, remembered how distant she’d been, how far away she had felt and how disorienting it was to come back to reality, so unlike the place conjured by her imagination. Deep down, she knew that she had been too far gone to be talked down, that trying to break through to her would never have worked, and that the same was true for Jadzia. Julian had needed to shout, to yell and hold her back in order to break through the walls that had erected themselves around her, and she was not nearly as far gone back then as Jadzia was now. She knew that. She _knew_ it.

It didn’t help much, though. Knowledge was a slippery thing out here, and it didn’t help to know that she really couldn’t have avoided what she’d done to Jadzia any more than it helped to know that Keiko Ishikawa was not the Keiko O’Brien she knew, that the unsmiling Smiley was not her friend the chief. None of it helped, not at all, and she could still feel the burden on her shoulders, a pressure on her chest that got worse every time she tried to breathe, every time she looked down and saw the painkiller in her hand, another precious resource wasted because of her.

Suddenly she couldn’t even look at the hypo without feeling so guilty that her knees buckled, stomach churning as she remembered Jadzia’s hallucination-touched scream, the agony ripping from her throat as Dax twisted just a little too hard, using just a little too much force. Could she have controlled herself better? Should she have? How far could she blame what she’d done on the urgency of the moment, fear and panic and instinct, the knife hanging on the air between them, the madness dancing behind Jadzia’s eyes? How much could she blame on the situation, and how much was pure carelessness? Worse, was there a part that might have been on purpose, that might have savoured the scream, that might have twisted that little bit too hard not because she had to but because she wanted to? After everything she’d done here, wasn’t it at least possible that some tiny piece of what she’d done might have been deliberate?

She swallowed convulsively, waiting for her body to settle and wishing that she could force down the twisting of her self-doubts just as easily. “I’ll, uh… I’ll use it sparingly,” she promised, sounding weak.

“That’s all I ask,” Smiley said, and for a moment the weariness on his face was overshadowed by something that so desperately tried to be compassion. 

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t…” She trailed off before she could say ‘important’; for all that it was, it wasn’t that. “…if I didn’t think it would help. I know how difficult things are for you out here.” Painfully, willing herself not to flinch, she raised her head and met his gaze. “All of you.”

Smiley’s expression softened at that, as though it really did mean the whole world to him just to be included, just to be counted among the rebels, just to be thought of as part of the cause. He was long accustomed to being downtrodden and forgotten, Dax could tell, and it broke her heart to look at him and see him this way. The exhausted frustration in his eyes was agony to look at, and the lines of strain on his face ran so much deeper than they did on the good-hearted chief she knew so well.

Her O’Brien’s face was lined with laughter as well as stress; the man standing before her now was one who had fought tooth and nail for even the tiniest sliver of freedom, who had struggled so hard for a chance to spread his wings only to learn that a gilded cage was more to his liking after all. Better to be unappreciated and ignored in a world where every man was a slave, she supposed, than to be a worthless nobody in this den of scoundrels and vagabonds where where men like Sisko were hailed as heroes just for having loud voices.

“The captain said we should…” Smiley said in a stumbling stammer, as though he felt the need to justify everything he did for fear that Sisko would string him up for daring to defy him; given her own experiences with the short-fused captain, Dax supposed she couldn’t really blame him for taking precautions. “He told us do anything you asked, make you as comfortable as we could. Like I said, we don’t have much, but we’re supposed to give you whatever you want.”

He looked down, shy and awkward, and Dax found herself overwhelmed by the urge to hug him. She’d never felt that urge with the chief, and the difference calmed her a little. She mustered a smile instead, and clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder, frowning when he bit his tongue to keep from flinching away.

“That doesn’t sound like your captain,” she remarked, trying to lighten the mood. “From what I’ve seen of him, the only comfort he’s interested in is his own.” She thought back to the conversation they’d just had outside, the sudden intensity in every part of him when he talked about Jadzia. “But I suppose he does care about her, in a strange sort of way.”

“He does,” Smiley said, a little too quickly. “She’s about the only thing he does care about.” Dax thought she caught a hint of bitterness flicker across his features, but it was gone before she could be sure. “Don’t get me wrong, he believes in what we’re doing here, the rebellion and all that. But it’s not really us he cares about, if you catch my drift.” Dax tried and failed to keep from frowning, and Smiley rushed to reassure her, defending his captain rather more out of fear than loyalty. “But I guess he has to be ruthless. The situation we’re in, we can’t exactly afford to throw luxuries around, you know?”

Another shadow of self-loathing passed across Dax’s heart. That was her fault too, her inner voice cried out again. At the very least she wasn’t making it easier, and at the most she was making it a whole lot worse. It was her fault that these poor people were being forced to waste their resources, handing out their precious water rations whenever she got a little thirsty and throwing away their scant medical supplies to help ease injuries that should never have been inflicted in the first place.

Smiley and the other rebels were doing a wonderful thing. Though she doubted it felt that way to them, she knew that they were. She had seen rebellions from the other side, the freedom that came after, and she understood what they were doing. She thought of Kira again, her Kira, the Kira who had spent her life fighting for freedom just like these people, putting herself at risk every day in the vain hope of making a mark on the bastards who were oppressing her people. It left a sour taste in Dax’s mouth to remember that Kira was one of those oppressors in this universe, that she was the one these people were fighting so furiously to overthrow. A flash of sorrow cut through the guilt, if only for a moment, and when she found the strength to look at Smiley again, it was with a very different kind of pain.

It was remarkable. What they were doing here, and what Kira had done in the Bajoran resistance. Dax, pampered and privileged as she was, didn’t know if she would ever have as much courage as they did, if she would ever have the strength or the dedication to stand up and cast aside everything she knew and loved to fight for the rights of others. She didn’t think she’d ever have the mettle to do that, but these people did. Without so much as a thought for their own safety, they were giving up everything they had in the fight for Terran freedom. Terrans like Smiley and Sisko, yes, who had a personal stake in the outcome, but others too; she’d seen Vulcans milling around among the rebels, and Jadzia the Trill as well. They weren’t in any danger, but still they were throwing everything away to fight for what was right. And here she was, Dax, coming from her perfect little universe and asking them to hand over what meagre rations they had just so she could undo yet another dumb mistake. She felt very ashamed, guilt drowning the sorrow once again and spreading like a blight in her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she was. For the painkillers, for Keiko, for Jadzia. For a million other things that she would never be able to put into words.

Smiley shrugged, like apologies were as cheap as the dirt that made up the floor in this would-be safe-house of theirs. He’d either heard it all before more times than either of them could count, or else nobody in this wretched place bothered to waste their breath with hollow words that nobody really meant. Dax wanted to take him by the collar, to shake him and make him understand that she really did mean it, that she truly was sorry, that she’d give anything to undo what she’d done, to let him keep his precious painkillers, to stop the suffering of all the people in this wretched universe. She wished she could make him believe that, but she could tell without trying that she would only be wasting her breath. Some things in this place were just too different to change.

“What’s ours is yours,” he told her hollowly, and the part of Dax that was still Curzon thought fondly back to days wasted on Risa, a million light-years and a universe away from here. “Truth be told, it’s as much for our benefit as yours to keep her happy. The captain’s insufferable enough when his little… that is, the other you…” He fumbled a little, as though afraid of offending her if he said the wrong thing, and Dax shrugged off the issue with a self-deprecating smile. “What I mean,” he went on, reassured, “is that he’s unreasonable enough when she’s actually healthy. I don’t want to think about what kind of mood he’d be in if something actually happened to her.” He shuddered. “Lord have mercy…”

The words made Dax feel uncomfortable. So many misplaced priorities, so many people caring about the wrong things for the wrong reasons, and though she understood why it was the way it was, that didn’t make it any less upsetting. In a sad sort of way, she supposed it made sense that they were climbing the walls in this dank hole, snarling and spitting at each other, venting their frustrations in the only way they knew how, holding their resentments close to their chests and lashing out at anyone who got too close.

If a little misplaced bitterness was what it took for these people to hold themselves together, if that was what they needed to keep doing what they were doing, to hold themselves together for long enough to keep fighting for those who couldn’t fight for themselves, if this was what they had to do to keep their eyes on the thing that really mattered, then she supposed it was a small price to pay. That weather-beaten look on O’Brien’s face, the bitterness curling Julian’s lip, the short-fused belligerence lighting up Sisko’s face every time someone questioned him… in the grand scheme of things, was it really so much to endure if it meant an end to all that needless death?

“You’re doing good work here, Chief,” she said. It wasn’t enough, not nearly, but it was all she could think of to let him know that she understood, that she realised how much he was giving up for so little, and that she — who had nothing to gain and nothing to lose — was very thankful. “I mean, ‘Smiley’. You’re doing really, really good work.”

He smiled. Regardless of his nickname, Dax could tell that the expression was a very rare one. “Thank you,” he said, with more sincerity than she’d heard in all the time she’d been here.

Jadzia was asleep when she returned to the bedroom a few minutes later. She’d made it up onto the bed and was sprawled untidily on her back, eyelids fluttering and features tight with strain. Dax couldn’t make out the look on her face, couldn’t figure out whether she was dreaming or not; her jaw was tight, teeth grinding even as she slept, but her body was still and her limbs were loose and restful. She looked comfortable, if not actually content, and Dax took a moment to revel in the sight. She wouldn’t delude herself into thinking Jadzia had found any kind of peace, but at least she wasn’t flailing or trying to hurt anyone; from what she’d heard and what she remembered, that was almost more than either of them could have hoped for.

Not wanting to wake her, Dax killed the time in silence by studying the tricorder readouts, collating the data it had collected over the last few hours and trying to make sense of what it said. She wasn’t a doctor, not by any measure, but she was still a scientist, and she found a kind of comfort in facts and figures, numbers and levels, in analysing things she could make sense of even if she didn’t really speak their language. Suddenly pensive, she wished that everything was so simple, that her thoughts could be broken down into proteins and neurotransmitters and synapses, into molecules and atoms and numbers, that she could explain the chaos in her head just by running a scan and studying the readouts. She sighed, soft and low, and tried to lose herself in the fluctuating numbers and patterns and readings, tried to lose herself in Jadzia’s troubles so that she wouldn’t have to stop and think about her own.

It wasn’t long before Jadzia awoke. Dax wasn’t sure whether she was disturbed by her presence or whether she just hadn’t been sleeping very deeply in the first place. Either way, she’d only been there a few minutes or so when Jadzia gave a groggy groan, stirred, and sat up.

“Hey.” Dax mustered a smile, weak and wan though it was, and set the tricorder to one side; she kept her distance, waiting for an invitation before broaching Jadzia’s personal space. “How are you feeling?”

Jadzia stretched, wincing as she moved her wrist at an awkward angle, and Dax winced too in guilt-stricken sympathy. “You tell me,” she muttered, nodding at the tricorder. “Am I going to keel over any time soon?”

“Not as far as I can tell.” Dax tried to summon a chuckle, but she didn’t have the strength. “From what this thing is telling me, you’re doing just fine. So I guess congratulations are in order?”

Jadzia grinned, a little lopsided because she was still sleepy, then saw the hypospray in Dax’s hand. “Is that my painkiller?” she asked, sounding entirely too hopeful; Dax wondered if the pain had worsened. “Let me guess: Julian gave you attitude about it, and you had to rough him up?”

The idea seemed to amuse her, as though she was secretly hoping the answer was ‘yes’. From her brief altercation with this universe’s Julian Bashir, Dax supposed she couldn’t really blame Jadzia for wanting the violent outcome; if there was anyone in this place who deserved a little impromptu ‘roughing up’, it was him. Still, though, she shook her head, looking down at the painkiller hypo with a fresh pang of sorrow and shame.

“Actually it was Smiley,” she admitted, keeping her eyes locked on the slim cylinder to keep from seeing Jadzia’s face.

She worked the settings for a moment, grateful to have a medicine that she did know how to administer, and leaned in to press the cold metal against Jadzia’s neck. The contact made Jadzia grimace, and Dax frowned at the unexpected warmth radiating from her skin, the lingering after-effects of sleep pouring out from her in waves. She thought about asking if she felt all right, but she didn’t want to give her any more reason to be concerned about her condition; positive thinking was the way to go, she decided, and didn’t say anything as she applied the drug.

“That’s good,” Jadzia murmured, seemingly more to take her mind off the hiss of the hypo as the painkiller released and seeped into her bloodstream. “Smiley’s a good man. Too good for the likes of us, really.” She smiled, but it was sad and strained. “Sometimes I think I could probably clock him in the jaw and he’d end up apologising for bruising my knuckles.”

“He does seem the sort,” Dax said, and tried not to look too miserable.

Jadzia, of course, noticed straight away. She sat up a little straighter as she shook off the lingering cobwebs of her grogginess. “Are you all right?” she asked, and Dax silently cursed her powers of observation. “You seem a little out of sorts.”

Dax thought of Smiley, of the happiness that he deserved, the happiness that everyone here deserved. She thought of the future she’d stolen from him. She thought of the Chief O’Brien she knew, of the light in his eyes every time he talked about his wife, his daughter, his family, the unabashed joy they brought to him even on his darkest days. She thought of Keiko O’Brien, the woman he loved and the woman who loved him, the botanist, the teacher, the wife and mother, the woman who played so many different roles and fit into them all so effortlessly, the woman who had so much to offer and so much energy to share with anyone who wanted it. She thought of them both, and ached.

The rebels here, the people who lived out their days in in this melancholy and hope-starved place… they could really use a woman like Keiko O’Brien. Not just the bitter and worn-down Smiley, but all of them. Sisko and Julian, even Jadzia. They could all benefit from her energy, her strength, her wisdom and her fortitude. They would thrive with her gifts and her talents. And it was Dax’s fault that they never would.

She breathed in deep, and exhaled very slowly. She tried to force the thoughts aside, to push them away as she had done a thousand times before, but they would not go. She couldn’t insist that she was fine, because she knew that Jadzia would see through it, that she would read the distress in her voice as clearly as if she’d come out and admitted she felt terrible. She couldn’t unthink, couldn’t unfeel, and part of her couldn’t help but wish for some of the hollow emptiness that she’d felt on the journey back here. It had felt so awful at the time, and part of her still quivered to remember the horrible chasm in her chest, the hole in her heart, the complete loss of feeling; it had been unbearable, yes, but at least it had been simple. If nothing else, it had been that. Why wasn’t anything simple any more?

Apparently, at least as far as Jadzia was concerned, her silence was. “Okay, fine,” she muttered. “You’re all right or you’re not all right. Either way, you’re not going to tell me, right?” Dax shrugged her affirmation, and Jadzia huffed a laugh, tilting her head at the tricorder. “So then, am _I_ all right? What’s that stupid thing saying about me?”

“Only good things,” Dax heard herself say, and reminded herself to breathe. She picked up the tricorder, holding it in front of her like a protective force field, like it could somehow protect her from Jadzia’s curiosity. “Your levels have evened out. I think we’re actually making some progress.” She mustered a cocky grin, though she doubted it would be very convincing. “I told you it would help to get some rest.”

Jadzia’s expression flickered, the relief in her eyes narrowing them with suspicion and concern. “You did,” she said softly.

Dax was grateful that she didn’t push her for anything more than that, and doubly grateful that she didn’t seem especially affronted by Dax’s inability to talk about her own issues. She wasn’t here for herself, after all, and there would be time enough for her to break down and collapse under the weight of everything she’d been through once she was in the safe haven of her quarters on Deep Space Nine, surrounded by the familiar faces of people she actually knew. She didn’t want Jadzia to see the part of her that Sisko had seen so easily, the part of her that was so close to breaking down, the part of her that could barely remember how to breathe. She didn’t want Jadzia to see anything other than the shining paragon of healing that she so badly needed.

“Look,” she pressed, forcing her voice to stay steady and even. “We’re on the right track here. We should really focus on—”

“I know we should.” Jadzia’s expression was sober, and her voice was very low. _No,_ Dax thought, knowing it was futile. _Please no. Not now. Not me._ “But you… you’re me. And you’re going through the same thing I’m going through. And if where you are really is where I’m headed, then I want to know where that is.”

There were shadows under her eyes when she turned away, and Dax found herself wondering if perhaps her sleep hadn’t been quite so peaceful as it had seemed. Dax held out a hand, tried to placate her. “Jadzia, I’m not…”

But Jadzia didn’t want to hear it. “Look. I know the drill. We’re both Daxes, I know as well as you do that we don’t talk about things. And that’s okay. You don’t have to tell me what’s going on. You don’t have to tell me if you’re all right or not. It’s none of my business, and I don’t… I shouldn’t care. But you’re still me, okay? You’re still me, and I just… I want to know something. You know? If you’re really just in shock from whatever happened on Terok Nor, that’s okay. I get it. I really do, and if it still hurts, we don’t have to talk about it. But if you’re…” Her jaw went white, lips trembling. “If it’s about this, then I want to know. I want to know where you are. I want to know where I’m going.”

Dax swallowed. As desperately as she wanted to keep it hidden, to hold her own pain close to her chest just like she always did, she couldn’t help remembering how she’d felt in Jadzia’s position. She would have given anything in any universe for someone to tell her what was happening to her and where it would take her. She would have sold her soul long before Joran had got his hands on it just to know with some tiny fragment of certainty where she was headed, what she was turning into. In its own way, uncertainty was the most frightening thing Dax could think of, and her heart ached to look at Jadzia and see that same fear of the unknown in the way she twisted her good hand in her lap, the way she looked up at her with sleep-touched anxiety. She didn’t want to know everything, just _something_ , and Dax didn’t have the heart to deny her that.

“Nowhere good,” she admitted, turning her face away. “Where you’re going is… not good.”

Jadzia sighed, deep and heavy, and Dax looked up just in time to see her biting blood from her lip. Her face was pale, but there was an odd twitch at the corners of her lips, like she didn’t know whether to be relieved or anguished. “I see,” she said, very quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Dax said. “I don’t… I can’t…”

“Jadzia.” Dax flinched at the name, hearing the Intendant’s voice and wishing she didn’t think of Kira’s face. Jadzia, the one who fit that name so much better than she did, frowned at the reaction, worried and frightened in equal measure. “Dax, then. Whatever.”

“I’m sorry,” Dax said again, and closed her eyes.

“Don’t be sorry. ‘Sorry’ won’t help either of us. Just…” She sighed again, heavier and louder. “You’re supposed to be here to help me, aren’t you? You’re supposed to be here to make things easier.”

“It’s not—”

“The hell it’s not.” She clenched her jaw, visibly trying to regain control of her slipping temper. “Look. I know it’s… I know it goes against your nature to ‘talk things through’. Hell, it goes against mine too. We Daxes aren’t exactly known for talking about our feelings, are we?”

Despite herself, Dax laughed. “We’re not.”

Jadzia smiled briefly, but it faded quickly. “I understand that too. But you said we’d talk about it once we got my levels stabilised. You said you’d try to help me connect with this psychopathic bastard you say is inside me. You stuck your neck out going to Terok Nor in my place so you could get me that damn medicine and get me better. Well, it’s here, and I’m getting better, and I don’t…” Her voice cracked, and she looked away, unable to meet Dax’s eye. “Benjamin’s right, you know. You really do look like hell, and I don’t want to sit here wondering if I’m going to look like that too when I get to where you are.”

Dax closed her eyes. Jadzia had a fair point, she knew, but it was hard to pick apart the different pieces of herself, the parts that were still reeling from everything that had happened with Joran, and the parts that were simply broken after Terok Nor.

She tried to block out the memories of that place, the terrible things that had happened there, Keiko and the Intendant, all of it. She tried to break it down, to set it aside and focus on what mattered to Jadzia, on Joran and his influence, the violence in her head and the phantasms that still haunted her dreams. She tried to lock into that, to black out all the rest — especially that place, especially Terok Nor — and just see him, him and her and them, symbiont and host in tune with each other once again, however hard it was. She tried so hard, but she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t separate one from the other any more, couldn’t make sense of where Joran’s influence ended and where the influence of that dreadful place began.

“I don’t know,” she said aloud, and hoped that Jadzia would see just how deep that confession ran. “I don’t know what you’re going to look like when you get to where I am. Hell, I don’t even really know where that is, where I am and what that’s supposed to mean.” She sighed, feeling exhausted, and reached for Jadzia’s wounded hand. “If you really want the truth, Jadzia, I don’t even know for sure that you will get to where I am, wherever the hell it is. I don’t know that your journey will be the same. I don’t know where you’re going, and I definitely don’t know what you’ll look like when you get there.”

Jadzia mustered a chuckle. “Finally, an honest answer.”

“I’ve always been honest with you,” Dax argued. “And I’m going to be honest now, too. The fact is, for all I know, all of this could be for nothing. You’re going to run out of medicine eventually, and even if I give you Joran Belar’s entire life story as fully interactive holo-novel, I still can’t guarantee that it’ll be enough to pull you through on your own. We don’t have any symbiont pools here, or Guardians, or medical experts, or any of the resources I had on Trill. I can’t bring him out of you, not like they did for me. I can’t help you to integrate him. I can’t do any of the things they did for me.” She sighed, and Jadzia did the same. “All I can do is try to tell you who he was and what he did, and hope that’s enough to trigger some piece of memory in you, and help you to start bringing him out on your own. That’s all I can do. That’s all.”

“It’s something,” Jadzia reminded her. “at least it’s something.”

“Just because it’s more than nothing, that doesn’t mean it’s something,” Dax countered. “And besides, even if it is, I don’t know if it’ll do either of us any good. This universe is very different from mine. It’s…” She sighed, forcing herself to breathe. “It’s not good for me.”

“I can see that,” Jadzia said, and though she made no apologies for bringing her here, her voice was soft and very tender.

“But it might be good for you,” Dax went on, ignoring her. “This is the only kind of life you’ve ever known. This place filled with hate and violence and…” She trailed off, not wanting to think too hard, not wanting to think of all the things that carved deep valleys through her soul, afraid to think of what they might have done to Jadzia’s after eight long lifetimes. “I don’t know. All I know is that it’s different here, and that means it’s different for you. Joran’s influence might serve you well in a place like this. Having all that anger inside of you might be the difference between life and death when you’re fighting a war.”

“I guess.” Jadzia sighed. “It’s definitely not hurt Benjamin any. He’s the angriest person I’ve ever met.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re so good for each other,” Dax mused, feeling uncomfortable. “Listen. I know you’re scared of the hallucinations. I know you’re afraid of what they’ll make you do… but that’s not… that was never…” She shook her head, biting her lip until it bled dark and rich, proof of everything she was feeling, and fought to articulate all the things she was so afraid of. “It’s not the hallucinations that scare me, Jadzia. It’s the anger. It’s the hate. It’s _him_.”

Jadzia looked a little wounded. Dax watched her shoulders stiffen, defensive and irate. “I don’t like being angry either,” she huffed. “It’s not fun.”

“No,” Dax agreed. “It’s not fun. But it’s not frightening. Not to you. Being angry isn’t… it doesn’t cripple you. You don’t feel helpless, you just feel alone. You feel isolated and afraid, you feel like you’re not in control of yourself. I felt that way too. But that’s not the part that terrifies me. It’s not the isolation, and it’s not the hallucinations. It’s the violence, Jadzia. It’s the way I feel… those uncontrollable urges to do terrible things, to hurt people, to…”

She remembered how the Intendant’s throat had felt under her fingers, yielding and bruising, remembered wondering how easily her neck would snap. She remembered the breath rattling in her chest, cut off and choking, remembered how the sound had sickened and excited her at the same time. She remembered how powerful she had felt, how it had struck like a bolt between her legs to feel the Intendant gasp and groan, how she’d felt so in control of the situation and so out of control of herself.

She remembered the knife, too, the blood welling up between her fingers as she squeeze the blade between them, how the blood and the blade had caught the light in such different and beautiful ways. Jadzia’s knife, Dax’s blood… and there it was in stark flashes of silver and red, the fundamental difference between them.

“You carry a knife,” she said out loud. “You carry a phaser. You carry weapons and throw punches and use violence to make your point. You slap the man who shares your bed just because he’s an idiot. You shoot and you stab and you you hurt people because that’s what you need to do to survive. That’s your life. That’s you. You hurt people and then you kill them, because if you don’t they’ll kill you instead. You’re fighting for your lives out here, and you do what you have to do to keep yourselves going.”

“I know that,” Jadzia said, voice as cold as her eyes. “I know what I do… what we do. I don’t need to hear you to tell me what I’m living through every day.”

Not for the first time, Dax thought of Kira. She remembered her speech those few months ago, the quiet urgency in her voice as she tried to talk Dax out of killing the Klingon criminal who had wronged Curzon. _“When you take someone’s life, you lose a part of your own as well,”_ she’d told her. How many pieces of Jadzia’s life were already lost out here? How much of herself had she already forfeited for the greater good? Would a few more, courtesy of Joran, make any difference?

“That’s the difference,” she said out loud, a hollow echo of her thoughts, and probably the only one that she could make Jadzia understand. “That’s the difference between us. You hurt people, and you kill them, because that’s the life you live. But I don’t. I don’t hurt people, and I don’t kill. I don’t… I’m not even sure I’m capable of killing.”

“You are,” Jadzia told her, eyes dark and cold. “Trust me.”

Dax ignored that, not because she wanted to but because she had to; if she let herself think about it now, she would drown. “My point is,” she went on, voice shaky, “I don’t do any of the things that you have to do to stay alive. I’m not violent, and I never was. Until now, I’ve never…” She shook her head, scarcely able to even think it, much less say it. “I’ve never been violent at all, ever. And suddenly wanting to be… suddenly having all those terrible urges inside of me…” Her eyes stung, pricking painfully with tears, but she blinked them back. “That’s more terrifying than a hundred dreams, or a thousand hallucinations… _to me_. But it’s different for you.”

Jadzia frowned, chewing at her lower lip but not really biting it. “I don’t mind being angry,” she murmured, as though it was a shameful confession. “I mean… I don’t enjoy it. But it’s useful. Like you said, it’s what keeps us alive. Most of those boys out there, anger’s the only thing they have left. But this thing… it’s not just anger, is it?  I feel like I can’t control it, like I can’t control myself. It just takes over, and I can’t…” She clenched her teeth. “Benjamin…”

“Benjamin cares about you a lot more than you think he does,” Dax said quietly, thinking of the way he’d cornered her and threatened her on his lover’s behalf. “There aren’t many men out there who would cross universes just to bring back some help for someone else.”

Jadzia shrugged. “Maybe not,” she said, clenching her jaw and turning away. “And maybe I never gave him enough credit, even before all this. But there’s a big difference between slapping him when he’s an insensitive idiot and waking up with my hands at his throat, or socking him in the jaw for no reason at all, or pulling my knife on him just because he put his hands on me in a bad moment, or—”

“Okay,” Dax interrupted, not wanting to hear any of this. “I get it.”

“It’s so different,” Jadzia said. “I don’t mind being angry. That’s nothing new. But not being in control…”

Dax nodded. “I know,” she said, very quietly, and turned her face away.

She looked into herself, thought back again to Terok Nor, to the way she’d found her courage to face the Intendant after the incident in Ore Processing, the rage she’d felt after being forced her to her knees and strung her up as a martyr in front of Keiko and the other Terran slaves. She remembered how willingly she had listened to Joran, how she’d welcomed his influence as she threw the Intendant up against the bulkhead in her quarters, yelling and throwing punches, pouring out all the humiliated frustration she had inside her.

That was the first time she’d felt like she was in control of the fury bubbling inside her, the first time she’d truly known where she stood, that the anger was hers and not his, that the fire lighting up her veins was in her own blood and not simply a mnemonic echo of someone else’s. She’d felt powerful, yes, but far more importantly, she’d felt vindicated. She’d felt like she had awakened some critical part of herself, like all those things she’d been so frightened of had finally found an outlet. For the first time, it had made sense. All the anger, all the hate, all the rage; for the first time, it wasn’t coming from out of nowhere. It wasn’t incomprehensible and uncontrolled, and it wasn’t meaningless. For the first time, it belonged to her, and it was justified.

And so, she had embraced him. Joran and all his anger, Joran and all his violence. She had embraced his feral urges and his savage instincts, the ache to hurt someone not in the safe haven of a holosuite but right there in the real world, the heat and the want, the desire to destroy. The Intendant was twisted, a perverse and destructive creature, and she had earned every drop of blood that Dax spilled. She didn’t need Joran to justify her hatred or her violence; the Intendant had justified it for her. She’d felt like her head was splitting open, like all eight Dax hosts were screaming at the same time, but all in perfect harmony, united with the same feeling, the same anger, a depth of fury that everyone from the violent Joran to the anxious Tobin could all agree on. Joran fed the flames, and Jadzia poured it out, but the fire came from all of them, from Dax.

This place, this universe had brought that out in her. For all the terrible things it had done, it had given her that, an outlet for all that hate and rage, a justified target for all the anger churning inside of her, a real reason for feeling those things that refused to be shut down. It had given Joran a way of making himself heard, and Jadzia a way of communing with him; it had given the two of them a moment of common ground. For the first time, they had been completely connected, focused together, in absolute harmony with each other. She’d fed off his rage, and he’d been more than glad to feed her with it. For the first time, here in this universe, Dax had felt like Joran really was a part of her, like he was a part of the symbiont, like she might one day be able to live with him inside her.

Even now, she wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Giving in to the anger and the hatred had felt so easy, and she had been so easily wrapped up in it. It was a razor-thin line, far too easy to fall from, and she wasn’t sure whether she was more afraid of falling now that she had found that line and seen how precarious it was, or less afraid because she had walked it and survived. All she knew was that it was there because of this place; this twisted universe had given her a reason to be angry, a reason to hate, a reason to feel all those things that Joran wanted. It had given her a moment of clarity, a connection to the psychopath inside her that she may never have found in the safe haven of her own universe. Whether that was good or bad, she might never know, but Jadzia would have to.

“I wish I could take you back with me,” she heard herself murmur.

Jadzia blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Back to my universe,” Dax said. “This place has done so much for… _to_ me. I wish I could take you back to mine. I wish I could give you something positive, something good to remember when you lose control.”

Jadzia stared at her, lips parted and eyes wide, brows raised almost to her hairline. The look on her face was a heartbreaking amalgamation of sorrow and optimism, of hope and hopelessness, and it struck Dax with all the force of a kick between the ribs, stopping her breath and almost driving her to her knees. It wasn’t quite faith, wasn’t quite Nerys, but for a breathtaking moment it was so close that Dax felt her heart stop.

“Why can’t you?” The question was barely a whisper. “Why can’t you take me back there?”

Dax’s breath hitched in her throat; it hurt, like her lungs were tearing. “You know why,” she said, though the words felt thread-thin and sounded cold.

Jadzia hung her head, frustrated and morose but acceptant. “I do,” she sighed, and Dax was surprised by the steel in her voice, stubborn and angry in spite of the sorrow slumping her shoulders. “Wretched as this place is, I belong here. And you belong there, in that perfect little universe with its peace and quiet and… people like you.” The words came out like an insult, an accusation, but there were stars in Jadzia’s eyes as she said it. “I suppose it wouldn’t really be fair of me to try and steal your universe. I’ve stolen enough in this lifetime already.”

She sounded so anguished, so self-destructive that Dax couldn’t keep from reaching out to touch her shoulder. “You do what you have to do,” she said. “I don’t judge you for that, and you shouldn’t judge yourself.”

“I don’t,” Jadzia insisted, but she couldn’t meet Dax’s eye.

Dax sighed. “You were right. I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to live on this side, and it’s not fair of me to act superior just because my universe is easier to live in than this one is. And that’s the truth of it: I do have it easier. I have it a lot easier, and you were right to call me on it.” She squeezed Jadzia’s shoulder, firm but gentle. “But in the end, all it really means is that you’re better equipped to deal with Joran.”

Looking pensive, Jadzia pressed her fingers to the splint on her wrist until the pain made her suck in her breath. “I don’t feel better equipped,” she said softly.

“I know you don’t,” Dax replied, just as quietly. “But you are. Violence and anger, even hatred… they’re not new to you here. You deal with it every day. I promise you, Jadzia, once you’re able to process those memories surfacing inside you, you’ll be just fine.”

Jadzia still looked dubious. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because you’re not alone.” She leaned in, close enough to press her lips to Jadzia’s cheek, and then to her mouth. “I know you feel isolated out here. I know you feel like Benjamin doesn’t understand, and nobody else cares. I know you feel lost and helpless, cut off from Trill, and caught up in a fight that doesn’t really have anything to do with you. I know you feel like you’re living out a horrible nightmare all alone. Believe me, I know, and I know how it feels. But you’re not. You’re not isolated, and you’re definitely not alone. Your Benjamin Sisko cared enough about you to cross over and bring me back from another universe. Now, maybe he doesn’t understand, and maybe he’s too lazy to even try. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. He does, Jadzia. He cares so much, and…” Her voice cracked as she thought of Garak, so quick to change sides, even to kill an innocent just to save his own hide. “In a world like this one, that’s a pretty big deal.”

Jadzia didn’t seem any more convinced than she was before, but this time she didn’t try to argue. “A lot of things are a big deal over here,” she said softly.

“I know,” Dax said again, though the words rang hollow. Honestly, she didn’t really know most of the things she claimed to, but the lie seemed to comfort Jadzia just the same. “This place is like poison to someone like me. But to you… to you, it’s home.”

“I was exiled from my home,” Jadzia reminded her, and the bitterness turned the ice in her eyes to something dangerous. “I’ll never see my home again. This place…” She gestured, taking in the room. “I don’t know what this place is, but it sure as hell isn’t my home.”

Dax sighed. She knew that Jadzia was being difficult on purpose, that she was antagonising her in the vain hope of covering over her insecurities; Dax herself did the same thing more often than she could count. It was bad enough to be weak, she knew, bad enough to ache for something she could never have, but to see it dangled so temptingly in front of her was more than anyone could bear. Jadzia would give anything to be able to hide in her universe, a universe where she wasn’t exiled, perhaps even a universe where her beloved Kahn wasn’t dead. She would give anything to go there, and it broke Dax’s heart to deny her.

She would give anything, too, anything within her power for this woman, this lost soul who was herself. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing only the worst emotions reflected back at her, pain and anguish and loss, like seeing all the parts of herself that scared and hurt her, and she would give anything to make that suffering less. But she was still a Starfleet officer, and a scientist, and there were lines that even she couldn’t cross, no matter the reason. Jadzia belonged here, just as Dax belonged there, and for all the rules she had torn to pieces in coming here, that was one she would not break.

Besides, as much as it shamed her to admit it, there was still a part of her that couldn’t help feeling a little uneasy at the thought of another Jadzia Dax walking around in her universe, keeping company with her friends, seeing her Nerys and thinking of the Intendant, smiling at her O’Brien and giving attitude to her Julian, offering her Benjamin the same treatment that she gave this one…

She shook off the thought, forcing herself back to the task at hand. A quick glance at the tricorder had her reaching for the benzocyatizine once more, readying another hypo. “We really should focus,” she said, a gentle invitation for both of them to push their pensive thoughts aside and look to the only thing either of them had any chance of changing. “How do you feel?”

“You asked me that already,” Jadzia pointed out.

“I did,” Dax agreed easily. “But you never answered.”

Jadzia shrugged, though Dax didn’t miss the sudden tension in her body. “What do you want me to say?” she demanded, flinching reflexively as Dax applied the hypo to her neck.

“I want you to be honest,” Dax said, hating that it was necessary to say so. “I can’t help you if you’re not honest. And besides…” She mustered a smile, though she doubted it would convince either one of them. “If you can’t be honest with me, who can you be honest with?”

Jadzia flushed, hot and uncomfortable, but Dax pressed the backs of her fingers to the curve beneath her jaw, tenderly keeping her from breaking eye-contact. They stared at each other for a few long moments, Dax trying to pierce the inscrutable facade and Jadzia struggling desperately to sustain it. It was a battle of wills, and Dax kind of expected it to end in a stalemate, stubbornness clashing against stubbornness, but Jadzia was still groggy and still in some pain, and her will was just a little weaker than Dax’s.

“You know how I feel,” she muttered at last. “I feel angry. With myself, with Benjamin, with the Intendant…” She pulled back then, ashamed and upset. “But most of all… more than anyone else in this whole worthless place, I’m angry with you.” She laughed, bitter and humourless. “Just the sight of you makes me so angry I want to scream. And we both know there’s no reason for it, that all you’ve done is try to help, but there it is. You wanted honesty, so there it is: the only thing stopping me from rearranging that perfect little face of yours is the fact that you broke my damn wrist.”

“That’s all right,” Dax said.

“No, it’s not.” She looked almost apologetic, which was a good sign. “It’s not all right, and it’s not fair. I know you’re trying. I know you’re doing your best to help me through this. I know how much you’ve put on the line for me. I really do. But I am so angry right now that I can’t even see straight. And I’m sorry, I really am, but I…”

She spread her arms, surrender mixed with frustration, but she had no reason to. Dax didn’t recoil, didn’t flinch or frown. She just nodded with all the empathy she had in her, smiling even as she knew that the quiet acceptance would only enrage Jadzia all the more; there were few things more infuriating to someone who was already feeling furious than going up against someone who was perfectly calm, someone who refused to reciprocate. Tranquillity was a soothing balm to most things, but to anger it was like a spark in a powder keg, and she half-expected Jadzia to dive on her by pure violent reflex.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said softly. “I got angry at people who didn’t deserve it too.”

She caressed the side of Jadzia’s face, but Jadzia swatted her hand away rather more forcefully than she had to, breathing deep as though it was taking everything she had to keep from lashing out. “Don’t touch me,” she hissed, then squeezed her eyes shut. “Whatever you do, please don’t touch me.”

Dax nodded, though she knew Jadzia wouldn’t see her, lowering her hand back down to her side. “If you think it might help,” she offered, “you can take a swing at me.” She smiled, mostly to herself. “Use your good hand if it’ll hurt less.”

“Why would I do that?” Jadzia shot back, and Dax saw the heat rising up in her, fury stoking even hotter. “You’re supposed to be teaching me how to control this thing, not encouraging it!”

“No,” Dax replied. “I’m supposed to be helping you to integrate it. This ‘thing’ is a part of you, whether you like it or not, and the sooner you understand that, the easier it’ll be for you to deal with it. We’re not just talking about chemical imbalances and low isoboramine levels, and you that know. We’re talking about a person. Joran Belar is just as real as Curzon or Torias or any of the others. The anger, the loss of control, all these things eating you alive… it’s not all just one big hallucination, Jadzia. It’s real, and it’s part of you.”

“Stop saying that.” Jadzia balled her fists, breathing hard and biting her lip against the pain in her wrist, and Dax took some comfort in realising that she didn’t feel the least bit compelled to do the same.

“It’s true,” Dax told her. “It’s true, and you have to accept that.” She softened, hoping that Jadzia would take the cue and unwind a little too. “Look. I know it’s frightening. I know it feels like they’re something separate and strange, like they’re coming from out of nowhere, like they’re not connected to you at all, but they are. They’re you. I’m not here to help you block that out, I’m here to help you remember it.”

“So do it, then!” Jadzia cried, furious and frustrated and a thousand other things all at once. “Help me remember, if that’s what you’re here for! If I’m going to have a shot at fighting this, don’t you think I deserve to know what I’m up against?”

Dax swallowed. It was easy to put it all into pretty speeches and passionate cries for Jadzia to pour out all her anger through her one good fist, but the thought of talking about the darkness still swelling in her own chest was still deeply frightening.

“Well?” Jadzia pressed, and Dax could tell that she knew everything she was thinking, how hard it was to put her money where her mouth was, to say the things she was rallying for, to give voice to all her latent fears and unwanted memories, to say it out loud and make it real for herself as well as for Jadzia. “What are you waiting for?”

“I…” she floundered. “It’s not that simple…”

“Yes, it is,” Jadzia insisted. “It’s exactly that simple. You’re just scared. You were scared before, and you’re scared now too.” She laughed again, cold and cruel. “You keep telling me how scared I am, trying to make out like I’m the one who’s afraid of facing it. You keep pushing it all onto me, but it’s not really about me at all, is it? You’ll pump me full of your stupid benzocyatizine until the damn stuff kills me before you’ll find the guts to just suck it up and talk about it.”

“That’s not…” But she stumbled, unable to lie.

It was true. It damn near killed her to admit it, but it was. Even after everything she’d been through, all the ways she’d really believed she’d come to terms with the rage still simmering inside of her, all the certainty that she was on the path to being truly joined with Joran, she was still afraid of facing him in name and voice and thought. She was still afraid of digging deep inside of herself, of harnessing his memories and speaking them aloud as if they were her own. She was still afraid of remembering how it felt to become him, and still so afraid of becoming him again.

His memories were hers now. She knew that, of course. They were as much her own as Curzon’s were, as much as Emony’s or Tobin’s or any of them. She couldn’t simply take the parts of Dax that she liked and ignore the rest; they were all parts of her, and she had to accept them all equally. She may not approve of Torias’s rashness, but it was still part of her; Curzon’s appreciation for too much bloodwine might sour her weaker stomach, but she indulged it just the same. They were Dax, the good and the bad, and so too was Joran. The terrible things he felt, she already knew, but the terrible things he’d done were her deeds as well, and that was what she needed to deal with now.

Just like Jadzia did, she too had to accept that Joran was inside her, that his memories and deeds were hers now, and that they always would be. She couldn’t ignore them, couldn’t pull his personality out of her when she needed his anger to bolster her own without truly understanding where that anger came from or what he had done with it. She had to accept that he was more than the sum of what he thought, that he was as much the sum of what he’d done… what _Dax_ had done. Just like Jadzia did, she had to accept all of him.

She took a slow, steadying breath. It hurt to look so deep inside herself, to actively engage him, to welcome his dark memories as she’d come to welcome his dark thoughts. Those memories were sharp and painful, cutting inside her head like the blade of Jadzia’s knife against her palm; if her mind could bleed, she was sure it would do so in floods every time she let herself remember. And Jadzia was right about that; she was terrified of it. As readily as she had embraced the physical pain, the blood and the bruises, even just the thought of opening up the festered wound of his psyche left her shaking and scared. Deeply and fundamentally _scared_.

And maybe that in itself was reason enough to do exactly what Jadzia had told her to: suck it up and talk about it. Maybe that was reason enough to stare down at the abyss and dive in at last. She was the one who had drawn that razor-thin line, wasn’t she? She’d walked it and survived, hadn’t she? She’d harnessed the anger and the hate without letting them take her, hadn’t she? What more was a memory or two? What was a few bad deeds when she’d already seen innocents dead by her hand? There was nothing in Joran’s head that Dax hadn’t seen in this nightmarish universe, so why not?

“All right,” she said, in a voice like fire-forged steel. “You want to talk about it? Let’s talk about it.”


	28. Chapter 28

_She never asked for any of this._

_“Life and death,” they told her, reeling off reams of medical jargon that she had no hope of digesting. “Live or die by the choice you’re going to make.”_

_And that was supposed to be enough. She’d barely been awake for a few seconds, still dizzy and disoriented, too groggy to sit up without help, but that was supposed to be enough to set her straight. Her head throbbed, limbs aching and heavy as she shook off the lingering effects of artificially induced sleep, deep and blessedly dreamless, and it was enough of a struggle for her just to figure out which way was up. She could barely breathe, but somehow they expected her to make a decision, to live or die by some choice that she couldn’t understand. Life and death, they told her again, but she could barely even remember her own name._

_Dax. That was easy. But which Dax? Who was going to die if she made the wrong choice?_

_Julian held her hand, smiling through the words, even as the lines deepening his youthful face told her how worried he was. Benjamin, like always, kept her steady, one strong hand at the small of her back, supporting her frame when she bent double, head down between her knees to fight off the dizziness. Doctor Renhol, still the same stoic authority figure that tickled the memory of an idealistic young initiate, remained as cool and detached as ever, quiet severity thinning her lips and hardening her jaw to stone. Three distinct voices, and all she could hear as they talked at her was ‘life and death’._

_Life and death. Slowly but surely as the grogginess and the haze wore off, it started to make sense. Her life for the symbiont’s; her death so that it might live. That part was easy. It was drilled into the head of every initiate to ever sign up for the program, repeated over and over and over, again and again and again until it was the only thing they knew, the only certainty they had in a sea of confusion and disorder. The symbiont must live, always, even at the cost of the host’s own life. The host was just a link in an endless chain, useful but expendable, and the symbiont was sacred. Everyone knew that._

_Her death was one thing. But someone else’s life? A whole existence forgotten and remembered, memories and thoughts, new ideas and an old personality all coming alive inside her head? Where were the rules for something like that? Where were the rules for life after death?_

_A symbiont was a miraculous creature. Integrating its mind with that of a new host came as second nature; it did it without even thinking. One lifetime or a thousand, it didn’t really matter in the end; the information was all there already, sorted and collated, perfectly ordered and understood. The symbiont did all the hard work; all a host had to do was absorb and process what it already knew, catching up and adjusting to the influx of input. In the moment of joining, the symbiont’s knowledge became the host’s knowledge as well; it wasn’t a matter of learning, but of connection and integration, two hyper-intelligent computer systems linking together to share different quantities of the same kind of data, speaking the same language, slowly at first but always in perfect sync. It was stunningly complex, and unfathomably simple._

_This would not be anything like that. This wasn’t a typical joining, and she couldn’t expect it to work like one. Doctor Renhol made that clear, but the sobriety in her voice didn’t strike nearly as hard as the fact that Julian didn’t try to argue. He didn’t try to soften the blow or defend her; he didn’t say anything at all, and that hit harder than all the indecipherable medical jargon on Trill. In his own quiet way, he was agreeing, affirming by his silence that this was serious and dangerous, that she really would live or die by the choice she was going to make._

_Benjamin made the decision easy. He smiled that familiar smile of his, that patented heartbreaker grin that Curzon knew so well, and kept his hand at her back, lending her strength where she needed and support where she wanted. “I’m not ready to get by without you, old man…” he murmured, low and hushed, a plea for her ears only, and his words set fire to her inner strength._

_His faith brought her to the edge of the symbiont pools, but there it abandoned her. Her reflection looked strange in the milky depths, pale features trembling like ripples across the surface, ethereal and alien. It didn’t look like her at all, and that was almost as unsettling as the confusion in her belly, an unpleasant queasiness that was equal parts host and symbiont. She felt nervous and unsteady, and impossibly alone._

_The pool welcomed her, though, and so did the symbionts. That made her feel a little better, at least, though the fear lingered like a second heartbeat, thrumming through her in time with the ebb and flow of the currents around her legs and chest and the subtle push and pull of the symbionts as they swam towards her. A part of her felt like it was home, at peace and connected, in perfect harmony with this place, a flood of memory that came not from a host but from the symbiont itself. Seven lifetimes melted away, leaving behind nothing but Dax._

_Dax knew what to do. While the young woman trembled, chilled by the sloshing liquid and intimidated by the noble creatures that shared it with her, Dax was perfectly content. Dax knew, and Dax understood, and when the arc of electricity struck her square in the chest, it was Dax who lifted her head, Dax who guided her, Dax who reacted. Dax, the only one who did._

_Though her head and shoulders were above the surface, dry and safe, still the dazed young woman felt like she was drowning. She was lost, adrift in in her own confusion, hollowed out and broken, the chaos of the last few days reaching an ear-splitting crescendo. She couldn’t remember who she was. Jadzia, Curzon, Torias, Audrid, Emony, Tobin, Lela; she knew their names, but that was all. She didn’t remember who they were, what they’d done, how they had shaped her. She couldn’t feel, couldn’t think, couldn’t remember._

_There was nothing left of her, just an empty shell, a boneless body and the symbiont that filled it. The symbiont, Dax, who knew alone what to do._

_When she saw him, it was like looking into a mirror. Her head was empty, thoughts purged of everything that had been so natural a moment before, names and faces and identities, memories and personalities, everything except the creature that had held them for so long, but even with nothing else inside her she knew him. She recognised him, recognised him as she’d recognise her own face, her own name, any of their names, even if she couldn’t put any of those things together right now. It burned deep, so deep that nothing could rend it from her, and when she heard her voice whisper his name, she felt like she was talking to herself._

_“Joran.”_

_They locked eyes. His weren’t hers, of course; they were distant and dark and filled with things that frightened her. There were secrets in those eyes, things she couldn’t bear to imagine, much less know, and yet, in spite of it all, she saw herself. Recognition that ran so much deeper than familiarity and shone so much purer than empathy. It was raw, intangible and indefinable, but it was there._

_“You know who I am.” It was not a question._

_Dax knew. The young woman wasn’t sure; she was so many people, and she could not remember any of them. She knew, but she did not know. But Dax did; Dax knew, and Dax understood, and Dax guided her towards the answer, towards the knowledge and the understanding, towards him, and the fundamental truth inside them both._

_“You’re a part of me.”_

_And he was. That was the answer, that was the knowledge and the fundamental truth. It was who he was, and who she was too. He was a part of her, and she was a part of Dax. They both belonged here._

_He came to her, sloshing through the pale liquid, submerged almost up to his shoulders even as his skin remained impossibly dry. He knew who she was, too. She didn’t know how she knew that, because he didn’t say anything more, but she knew it as surely as she recognised herself in his eyes. He was a part of her, inside her, mixed up and scrambled, fragmented pieces of self and soul all tangled around the young woman named Jadzia and the rest of them too, those nameless others who had once meant so much. Who were they again? Six of them… no, seven now. It was so hard to remember, but Dax knew, and so she knew too._

_Right now, all that mattered was him. Joran, the missing part of her. She pulled him into her arms, and it felt like holding a ghost. He wasn’t solid, but he wasn’t intangible either; he was a presence, nothing more, incoherent memories given form in sight and sound and sense, existence shaped to a form that she could comprehend. She couldn’t sense him, not in any way that made sense to her fragile humanoid form; there was no touch or taste or scent, nothing to define feeling in a way that made sense… and yet somehow she did. She did feel, and what she felt was him. She felt him because Dax felt him. Dax felt, and Dax knew, and Dax remembered._

_Dax remembered everything._

__

*

__

_The first thing he remembered was dying._

_Four times, he remembered it. Four times, in four different ways, with four different names. Lela, Tobin, Emony, Audrid . He remembered a fifth, too, but it didn’t feel like death. Torias, the sly old dog, clinging stubbornly to life until the very end._

_Death, though. Such a strange and beautiful thing to remember. Once, slow and agonising. Again, quick and painless. Another, weak and tired and worn down, grateful for the reprieve, the promise of peace at last. He remembered dying old and infirm, young and strong, remembered feeling content and feeling afraid and feeling ready. He remembered begging for one more day, one more hour, one more second. He remembered feeling at peace, prepared and acceptant. He remembered feeling a thousand different things, some good and some bad, but they didn’t interest him at all. What use did he have for nostalgia and feeling? What use did he have for emotion and all its saccharine sweetness? He didn’t care about emotion; he didn’t care about regrets or fulfilment or last-minute epiphanies. He didn’t care about any of that. All he cared about was death._

_It was heady, intoxicating, sweeter than anything he’d ever tasted. He remembered blood in his mouth, fluid in his lungs. He remembered salt stains on his cheeks, pain rattling in his chest, gasping and grasping for one last desperate breath. He remembered choking, he remembered praying for air that wouldn’t come, he remembered stiffness in his fingers and chills in his toes. He remembered old age, the ravages of time turning his skin paper-thin, so easily torn by the tiniest things. He remembered a body that had once been strong and lean suddenly bent double with exhaustion, the tears of frustration so much sweeter than fresh-flowing blood. He remembered burns seared onto cracked dry skin, unbearable heat, and the taste of smoke and flames. He remembered spinning out of control, stars twisting unfathomably on a viewscreen, and the sudden sharp impact of a crash; he remembered internal injuries, an agony so intense that he lost consciousness blacking out for the last time. He remembered closing his eyes, never to open them again._

_Torias Dax closed his eyes, and Joran Dax opened them._

_He sat up, looked around, and smiled. A short distance away, he saw the lifeless body of the man who had once been him. Well, Torias, anyway. Dead or dying, he couldn’t tell at a glance, but he could definitely remember the last thing he would ever see. He supposed it didn’t matter; even if he did somehow survive the crash, he wouldn’t last very long without his symbiont, and those striking blue eyes would never see anything again. In the the moments before the crash, Torias had made his decision; Joran Dax remembered that too. He had accepted death, let the world below it rush up in a spiralling mass of trees and rock, let the impact claim him without so much as a whine of protest. Such a weak young man. Foolish and headstrong and stubborn. He’d made his choice, and now he would die. That was his prerogative, of course, and Joran was grateful for it._

_“It can be a little disorienting, I know.”_

_The voice was soft, compassionate, and he looked up, blinking into the soft-edged face of a doctor. Though his features were obscured by a surgical mask, the sickening sympathy in his eyes was unmistakeable, and entirely misplaced. Did he really have no idea who he was dealing with? Was he really so blithely stupid? If so, he was in for a rude awakening indeed, and the man who would be Joran Dax felt his lips curl into a sinister smile._

_“It’s exhilarating,” he replied, smiling. He looked to the table, to Torias. “I remember him. I remember being him. I remember how he felt in the moment before he died.”_

_The doctor took a step back, startled by what he saw in his eyes, the passion and the thrill. “He’s not dead yet,” he said quietly._

_There was a note of discomfort in his voice, a tremor of agitation and uncertainty that only grew more pronounced when Joran’s smile widened. He wasn’t dead yet; that was even better, and his blood thrilled at the thought, excited by the sight of his own past life ebbing away before his very eyes. Who else could claim to have seen death from both sides like this?_

_The doctor took an uneasy step back; the agitation was touching his eyes now, too, bright and translucent. Apparently, this was not the way newly joined Trills were supposed to react to the sight of a former host dying just a metre away. Still, he was a doctor, and when he spoke again it was with the clipped medical precision that came naturally to his kind, the unease and the discomfort carefully shunted aside, hidden where only the most perceptive could see it._

_“It’s good that you remember,” he went on cautiously. “It means you’re connecting with the symbiont.”_

_“I know I’m connecting with the symbiont,” Joran replied, unable to tear his gaze from Torias’s lifeless features. Soon, he thought, relishing the memory of the young pilot’s final moments. Soon. “I can feel it. I can feel everything. Everything he felt, everything he thought. It’s… it’s glorious.”_

_He heard the doctor clear his throat, not sure how to deal with this particular response, but he blocked out the sound and the man. What could a doctor tell him that the last five lifetimes hadn’t already? He didn’t want to hear a stream of pointless medical jargon that didn’t make a damn bit of difference to who he was or what he had become All he cared about was the dead-or-dying body in front of him, the face he had seen so many times in the mirror, the same face he was seeing now for the first time. All he cared about was Torias and the life bleeding out of him, a life he might once have taken a passing clinical interest in but now felt as a part of himself, as intimate as his own heartbeat, as potent as the blood thrumming in his veins. He looked at Torias’s face, and saw a stranger and a reflection at the same time, felt the stirrings of memory and the sting of familiarity, felt intimacy like he’d never known kicking at the edges of his senses. Pain, fear, loss, and the sweet promise of death._

_Those fool instructors at the Symbiosis Commission crowed over and over about the joys of being joined, the thrill and excitement of absorbing all those lifetimes’ worth of memories and experiences, the seamless blending of personalities and ideas and thoughts, the meshing of likes and dislikes, personal tastes clashing and complementing each other, the shaping of a whole new existence through the mixing of so many others. They had bored him for hours and days and weeks with all that nonsense, driven him almost to madness with the sheer mundanity of it, and the only thing that had kept him going through those long and tedious days was thinking of this moment, the moment where he would know and truly understand what it felt like to die._

_Now he knew. And now he understood._

_Still smiling, he hopped off the bed. He was a little light-headed and a little dizzy, but the minor discomfort paled next to the swelling of certainty inside of him, the crackle of excitement and eagerness. He didn’t have time to dwell on the after-effects of a major operation when he had more than a thousand new memories to explore, more than two hundred years’ worth of pain and death and suffering to trawl through. There were so many possibilities, so much to remember, so many experiences to relish. Who had time to think of being dizzy when the power of life and death was at his fingertips?_

_Part of him wanted to leave right away, to get out of this clinical hospital room, so sterile and clean and filled with people who wanted to help. He thought about going somewhere private, a quiet place where he could explore his new psyche on his own, in peace and free to be as sordid as he liked. It was a tempting thought. But then, far more than he wanted that, he wanted to stay here. He wanted to sit by Torias’s side, to drink in the sight of this man who had once been him, to look down and see a face that was his own, so still and lifeless. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to stand here and smile as he watched himself die._

_“It won’t be long now,” the doctor said, soft and reverent as he studied the machines hooked up to Torias’s body. “If you like, we can move you to somewhere more—”_

_“Now, why would I want you to do that?”_

_It was a simple enough question, but the doctor looked as though he’d asked for the blood of his firstborn child. “Well, it can be very disconcerting to see—”_

_“Oh, I’m sure it can be. But I’d sooner stay.” He let the smile drop from his face, forced himself to sober, let the doctor believe he was feeling grief instead of elation. “I think I’d like to make my own acquaintance while I still can.”_

_He could hear the unease in the doctor’s voice as he coughed, saw him scrabble for his medical equipment, looking for the answers on computer screens and in books; he wanted to tell him that he would find no answers there, that there were no answers anywhere. Joran Belar was an enigma all his own, but Joran Dax was something else entirely, and this little man with his little mind didn’t stand a chance against him. He thought of telling him to stop wasting his time, to stop wasting both of their time, but he couldn’t deny that it gave him a small flicker of pleasure to watch someone so foolish exerting so much effort on him. It made him feel important, and that made him feel powerful. Not as powerful as he felt looking down at Torias, of course, but then he hadn’t expected that it would. What could possibly make a soul feel more powerful than the sight of its own dead body and the memory of its own death, even as it lived on?_

_The doctor coughed again, nervous and nasal. “Are you sure?”_

_“Oh yes,” He narrowed his eyes, cool and calculating. “I’m quite positive.”_

_Seeming to think better than to argue with him this time, the doctor simply nodded and took his leave. Joran could feel the unease radiating out from the little man as he scurried away, and that delighted him all the more. His behaviour was peculiar, he had no doubt about that, but that didn’t mean there was any reason to worry; the doctor knew that as well as anyone._

_It was common knowledge, after all, that there was no such thing as an unsuitable host. Surely this strange young man was just a little eccentric. Surely he was just coming to terms with the five new lives inside of him. He was a musician, wasn’t he? Surely he was just a little sensitive, like those quiet creative types so often were. No doubt the medical professionals in this place had seen all kinds of strange behaviour in new hosts as they’d reoriented themselves with the symbiont’s old existence. Why should he be any cause for alarm? Discomfort was one thing, and he would relish all of that he could glean from those stupid doctors, but alarm was something else entirely, and no doctor would be foolish enough to indulge that._

_It was just his good luck, he supposed, that the Symbiosis Commission were so far up their own asses that they couldn’t see their own stupid mistakes, or admit it when they were staring one right in the face. But then, of course, Joran had always been clever, and he didn’t doubt for a moment that his new status in Trill society — one of the elite few, the chosen, the joined — was as much the product of his own merits as it was of their ignorance. He was a prodigy, after all, a musical genius with talents that far outstripped those floundering fools at the music academy, and a talent for charisma to boot._

_It didn’t take much for a man like him to keep under the radar as an initiate, to sweetly silence the whispers and murmurs, the twitterings that he wasn’t quite right and the suggestions that he should be washed out, that he wasn’t suitable for joining, or worse, that he was unstable. It hadn’t been a stretch at all to convince them otherwise, to crow about his achievements in all the right places, a convenient mention of an award or a scholarship, a subtle comment about his bright and promising future or the fact that his musical creations had already dazzled in some very prolific circles. His achievements spoke for themselves; all he had to do was make sure the right people heard it when they did. A master of his craft, Joran Belar was precisely the kind of shining example that the Commission so adored in its initiates, and it was all too easy to take advantage of their admiration._

_Before Dax, he was a genius. Gifted and clever, a quick thinker. He ticked all the right boxes and smiled in all the right places during interviews and examinations. He charmed everyone he met without the least bit of effort, and it didn’t take much at all for him to cover up the less enviable parts of himself. Nobody needed to know about his temper, or the way his thoughts drifted sometimes, the way he laughed inside when his instructors shouted at him, picturing his hands around their throats. Nobody needed to know about the way he let his mind wander, imagining everyone in the building burning alive, screaming and choking and dying while he watched and laughed. Nobody needed to know about that, and so nobody did._

_Every man had his fantasies, after all, and they were nobody else’s business but his own. What difference was there, really, between Joran’s fascination with death and the lusty instructor who coughed and sputtered when a young lady’s skirt rode up a little too high or her shirt dipped a little too low? At least death was civilised, he thought._

_He had always been morbid, had always fancied himself a bit of a sadist. As long as he could remember, he’d had a taste for violence, and it had been a great many years before he’d thought there was anything unusual in that; in fact, it had been his preoccupation with death that had drawn him to apply for joining in the first place. He didn’t care about life, about the centuries of accumulated experience, and he didn’t care about carving a place for himself in history. Why should he care about making his name immortal through the memories of a slug? His name would be immortal anyway, living on through his music; he didn’t need a symbiont to ensure that._

_But death was another thing entirely, and all those lifetimes a symbiont brought would mean a lot of death. It meant ages of pain and fear, grief and sorrow. It meant shuttlecraft accidents and long-lasting sicknesses, old age and tragic youth, breathlessness and bleeding and broken bones. So many different types of death to experience, so many memories to live out over and over again. How could those fools at the Commission be so obsessed with life and living, when death and dying were so much more fun?_

_The joining itself had been straightforward and simple, but he had opened his eyes a different man. It was one thing to think about it, to imagine death or even to dream about it, but it was another thing entirely to truly comprehend what it was like to die, to have those experiences he’d always wanted, to really know and to understand, to grasp so intimately those things that had always felt so out of reach. It was something fresh and new, beyond exciting, and it sparked that twisted part of him in ways that even he himself couldn’t have anticipated. It lit the fuse of his sadism, ignited the violence he’d always loved, the private fantasies he’d enjoyed so much. They were different now, shaped by experience and memory, remade into something new, something real. Those thoughts weren’t simply self-indulgent imaginings any more; now they were memories._

_All those things he’d imagined, all those hours he’d spent thinking about death, about violence, about pain and suffering… all those hours he’d spent wondering, imagining, fantasising… and now, at last, he knew._

_Joran Belar had been a troubled man, preoccupied with dark thoughts and violent tendencies, anger boiling over inside of him, a temper that even his loved ones flinched away from. He wasn’t dangerous, but he was one psychotic break away from it. He was a genius, but like so many troubled geniuses, his mind had been dark and poisoned. He had been distracted, driven almost to madness by the wondering. What was it like to die? What was it like to kill? What was it like to bleed, to cry, to fear, to hurt? What was it like to see and feel and know the face of death?_

_Joran Dax didn’t need to wonder any more. Joran Dax knew all of that, and more besides. Joran Dax had died four times — five, if he counted that lifeless lump lying on the bed beneath him — and knew more kinds of death than most mortals would ever imagine. Joran Dax had experienced it all, had lived and died and endured beyond it. Joran Dax had two centuries of life, and that meant he had two centuries of death, both witnessed and experienced. Joran Dax didn’t need to waste his time on fantasies. He had seen it all. He knew it all._

_He looked down at Torias’s lifeless form. The young pilot looked almost peaceful, features calm and smooth, like he’d already come to terms with his death, like all this lying around and waiting was just a formality so that the doctors could say they’d done their best. Thinking back, he supposed that was exactly how he’d felt. He remembered it all again, smiling with the fondness of familiarity. The moments before the crash, terror followed by impossible calm, the inevitability of it, the way he’d steeled his jaw and straightened his spine, so determined to go out with dignity even as he knew there was nobody else to see him. But then, Torias had always been a proud little bastard, hadn’t he? He was always the showman, always the loud-mouth, always blowing smoke out of his ass to prove some point no-one else cared about, all talk and very little action. His wife would probably attest to that part, Joran thought smugly, but she wasn’t here to ask._

_A quick glance at the readouts on the wall told him that the poor boy was still clinging to life, such as it was. It wasn’t much of one, hooked up to machines and lost in unconsciousness, and Joran didn’t need that fool doctor to tell him that without the symbiont Torias’s minutes were numbered. Still, though, he hung on, just as stubborn now as he ever was when he could breathe on his own. It was only a matter of time, Joran knew, before the separation or his injuries would end his miserable life completely, and free up the life support equipment for somebody a little more deserving._

_“Well, well, well,” Joran observed amicably, letting himself imagine that the comatose Torias could hear, that somewhere in his blacked-out awareness he could see the new life his symbiont had been granted. “Quite a mess you’ve gotten yourself in, wouldn’t you agree?”_

_There was no response from the brain-dead body, of course, but what did he expect? He had all of Torias’s memories now, and he knew well enough that the cocksure pilot wouldn’t waste his energy on talking to him even if he could. He had better things to do, like dream of his precious Nilani, as though the silly woman could have possibly loved a loser like him half as much as he’d pretended she did. Well, Joran thought, if that was how he wanted to spend his final hours, let him. Far be it from him to try and expand a young idiot’s mind while his heart slowly stopped. Frankly, if this was the sort of cretin the Commission picked for joining, it was all the more crucial for people like him to slip through the net. The symbionts needed a little excitement after wasting away inside simple-minded little boys like Torias._

_He studied the readouts on the monitor, life-signs hovering in the red, and felt a thrill of anticipation shiver through him. Who else, he wondered, could still their final breath and live to tell the tale? Who else could watch their own face turn white and cold as it choked its last?_

_The opportunity was too good to pass up._

_“What do you say, old boy?” he asked the motionless Torias. “Would you like me to put you out of your misery?” He smiled, though he knew the little fool wouldn’t see it, and let his palm hover tantalisingly over the life support controls. So close, so easy, so exhilarating… “The gift of mercy, from one Dax to another?”_

_Torias, of course, had nothing to say on the subject._

_Joran laughed at his silence. He imagined Torias as a victim writhing under his hands, pictured his fingers tight around a slim neck, feeling the pulse throb. He imagined the poor boy weakened and breathless, desperate for breath but unable to beg for it. He imagined so many delicious things, and shuddered to think of making them real._

_“Speak up,” he urged, invigorated and excited. “I can’t hear you.”_

_Torias’s eyelids fluttered, but he still did not speak. Joran imagined that he had, imagined him begging for mercy, begging for death, begging…_

_“Well, if you insist…” he said with an amicable smile. “I’d hate to think of you suffering in your final moments.”_

_He allowed himself the luxury of a chuckle, imagining the victim Torias of his fantasy clawing at his hands, desperate and urgent, struggling in vain as the life was choked out of him. This wouldn’t be very different from that at all, he mused, and shivered in delight._

_His fingertips trembled as he studied the controls, so excited he could barely breathe himself. Just like Torias, he thought. Life and death, symbiont and host; they weren’t so different at all? They were both staring down at the face of death, weren’t they?_

_The benefits of being a genius were many, and not least of all at this moment was figuring out in a matter of seconds how to deactivate a life support system and make it look like an accident. Joran had spent the vast majority of his life blessed by his talents and his intellect, but they were as good as nothing next to the scope of privilege that came with being joined. All it had taken was a few sweet words, a softly-spoken request and the pretence of grief, and here he was, alone with the stubborn remains of his predecessor, as though there was nothing dangerous in that at all._

_That was real beauty in all of this. Here he was, staring down at a man whose life he remembered in vivid detail, a man whose life he had lived, holding the flickering remains of that life in his hand, ready and eager to end it for both of their sakes, and all because he’d been joined. He’d been joined, so why wouldn’t it be perfectly acceptable to leave him alone and unsupervised in a room full of delicate medical equipment? He was joined! Surely that meant he was the elite, the most honest, the most trustworthy, the best that Trill had to offer. What possible risk could there be in leaving him alone in a room with a half-dead past host? What possible danger was there in leaving him to share a private moment with the unresponsive body of the man who had given him his symbiont?_

_Why, no danger at all, of course. He had been chosen for joining. He was the best of the best, a prodigy and a genius. He was everything a good Trill strived to be. Of course there was no danger in someone like him._

_He smiled as he thumbed the life-support controls, breath hitching with excitement as he watched the monitor go dark. Torias offered no reaction at all, not even so much as a twitch of his toe. It was pathetic, really, and not nearly as satisfying as Joran had hoped it would be. He wanted to see spasms and seizures, wanted to hear the gurgle of blood in the little boy’s throat, the choking gasp as he fought for air that would not come. He wanted to see death in all its glory; wasn’t that why he was here? He wanted to see it and hear it and feel it, to remember the agony in the moment that doomed shuttle had hit the ground. He wanted to watch that agony dance across his face anew, to see it from the outside as well as feel it from within, to look at this silly little boy who had once been Dax and know that it was the end. He wanted cocksure young Torias to struggle for his life, wanted to see him die, wanted to add that memory to the ones he already had. A second death on top of the first, finality to the coma that had left him as good as dead the first time round. He wanted so much, but all he got was silence._

_Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him after all. By his own admission, Torias was a lover, not a fighter. If he’d had Emony here in the little fool’s place, Joran suspected it would be a different story entirely, and one with a far happier ending for him. He would have gotten the horror show he wanted with her; he knew that because he remembered her death too. He saw it again now, as clearly as she had lived it back then, the stubbornness and the determination, fiercely resolved to cling to every last second of life she could drag from her faltering body, straining to grasp the unravelling threads of her existence until there was nothing left at all, fingers wizened and weak as they clutched at nothing, empty space falling between them. Even her final breath was something to hold on to, a prize to cherish until it was gone._

_Torias was nothing like Emony, though. He was nothing like Audrid either, peaceful and tranquil, sickeningly content even as the pain left her immobile. When the moment of death had come to her, she was surrounded by people who cared about her, and her final thoughts had been of love and warmth and family. She had died happily, and so far as Joran was concerned, that was unforgivable. Such a wasteful way to go, he thought, and was grateful that Torias at least had more dignity than that. At least he’d taken a shot at a blaze of glory, and if not for the stupid coma, he might even have succeeded. A hero’s death if he was lucky, but he wasn’t. He was stupid and reckless, and the only thing of any value to come out of his wasted death was this moment here, this moment where he would become the first._

_And he was. The first death by the hand of Joran Dax. The first of what he hoped was many, but the first just the same. It was a great honour, and one the silly little boy did not deserve. If he still wanted a legacy, some great accomplishment to be remembered for, let it be this._

_Torias Dax was a half-assed pilot, third-rate at best. He’d barely had the Dax symbiont for a year, and squandered the gift it had given him. He might have had an ego the size of a small planet, but it was barren and toxic, a wasteland without a soul to populate it. That precious ego of his was lifeless now, just like his broken body, fallow and empty and utterly pathetic. Dying was the best thing he could do, making way for the Dax symbiont to move on to a new host, a better host._

_It made Joran’s pulse race, watching those life-signs flatline, watching the worthless existence that once was Torias Dax flicker and fade. He felt proud, not of the wasted life Torias had been, but of the foundation he had laid for Joran, for the future of the Dax symbiont. He was the first. He might have done nothing with his life, but at least his death would be a monumental occasion. He was the first._

_“Congratulations, old boy,” Joran said, resting a hand on his cooling forehead. “You finally achieved something worthwhile.”_

__

*

__

_She never said a word about it, not to anyone._

_It was two days before the doctors at the Symbiosis Commission gave her permission to return to Deep Space Nine, and another forty-five hours on top of that spent cooped up in the cramped confines of the_ Defiant _as it cruised home. The return journey was a little longer than the outbound had been, and she suspected that it was intentional; she’d travelled enough long-distance flights in the little ship to know exactly what it was capable of, and forty-five hours from Trill to Bajor was beyond excessive. No doubt Benjamin and Julian were conspiring between them to give her some extra time to recuperate from the ordeal, assuming that a longer journey would force her to try and rest._

_It didn’t, of course. Even if rest had been an option, she was just stubborn enough to resist it as a point of pride. But that didn’t matter, because with everything churning inside her, she couldn’t relax even if she’d wanted to. There was a whole new existence awaking inside of her, an unstable and fractured psyche pushing its way through the cohesion of everything she knew, unravelling everything that had been so neat and tidy for so long, and two days under observation at the Symbiosis Commission were woefully inadequate in helping her to come to terms with that._

_How was she supposed to rest when her mind was being scrambled, when her identity was being rewritten from the inside out? Nobody could be expected to rest through that, and she had always been more reluctant to the idea than most. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t relax, couldn’t even close her eyes. And so, instead, she just curled up on the uncomfortable little bunk in her quarters, wrapped herself up in blankets that reminded her of Deep Space Nine, and tried to hold her fractured self together._

_The memories came and went in waves, tossing her about like a small vessel in a great ocean, seasick and shaking and scared out of her mind._

_Sometimes, in rare and precious moments, she almost thought she might be all right. She would remember something simple, something small and superfluous, a moment of childhood laughter or a practical joke played on an unsuspecting brother. She would remember a favourite colour or book or toy, knees skinned after slipping on a patch of ice or bruise-blackened eyes after running into a screen door. She would remember a hearth and a home, the love of proud parents, warmth and contentment, and for a moment she let herself be fooled into thinking that everything was all right after all, that perhaps she would survive._

_But then, inevitably, that moment would shatter, and the good memories would replace themselves with screams and sobs._

_She remembered a fondness for reds and blues, and smiled to think of a particular flower that bloomed red in the summer and blue in the winter. Reds and blues, lovely and simple… then, barely a heartbeat later, she remembered the rich reds of blood and the blackened blues of bruises, and bones shattering stark and white in the space between them. She remembered pain turned beautiful by those colours she loved so well, and the part of her that held those memories close smiled even wider as the part of her that still resisted twitched and trembled until she fell from the bed and hit the floor._

_She remembered a favourite food, sweet flavours flooding her mouth, fruits and nectars that lingered like joy on her taste buds. She remembered being sated and satisfied, warm and full and happy… and then, before she was done relishing that memory, another crashed down over it, overpowering everything with the taste of sweat and dirt and pain, acid burning sharp and strong in the back of her throat, and she pitched forward and vomited until her eyes rolled back and her breath came in choking wet hiccups._

_That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The shaking and the sickness, the violent and visceral reactions to violent and visceral things; in truth, she found that kind of comforting. These new sensations were terrible, and it gave her some comfort to know and feel that her body’s responses to it were terrible as well. It was reassuring that memories of brutality would shock her, that the taste of it would make her sick; it meant that she was still herself, that she could still be horrified by horrifying things. She was grateful for that, even as her body rebelled and made her thoroughly miserable. There was still a shred of Jadzia Dax left inside the churning monstrosity, if she could tremble at the thought of pain and retch to remember its taste._

_No, far worse than any of that were the moments when those things didn’t happen. Those moments frightened her more than anything else ever could. Those terrible moments when the same violent thoughts reared up inside her, and instead of shaking or vomiting or losing consciousness, instead she found herself smiling or laughing or whimpering with unexpected desire. That was worse than anything she could imagine. In eight lifetimes, nothing had frightened her half as much as this, the moment she remembered slitting a man’s throat and felt herself get wet._

_It happened again and again, over and over, a hundred times. She couldn’t control it, couldn’t stop it, and in the end she found herself wishing for those simple visceral reactions, wishing that there was something left in her stomach to bring back up or enough strength left in her limbs to start them trembling again. Anything but heat and want and excitement. Anything but that._

_Memory was a strange thing. She had spent hours upon hours trying to recapture elusive memories that Audrid or Tobin cherished, sifting through the sands of time and forgetfulness, struggling to catch hold of some half-lost shadow that she knew was there but couldn’t quite make out through the haze and the fog. She had lost days in contemplation, wishing that she could pinpoint an itching at the back of her mind, a tickle in her psyche, a hidden thing that wanted to be remembered but hovered frustratingly out of reach._

_And then, at the same time, there were memories she didn’t want at all, flashes of unwitting sensation in an awkward moment or the echo of a sound that left her off-balance and off-guard. There were a thousand different thoughts, a thousand different things that she’d tried to block out entirely, bad dreams and bad experiences, loss and hurt and trauma, things she didn’t want to think about at all, but they lashed out and struck her down as fast and as powerful as lightning at the very worst moments, stripping her bare and leaving her exposed._

_She’d never known anything like this. It wasn’t memory in any way that made sense, any way that she could process or use; it didn’t really feel like memory at all, so much as a sudden awakening of senses that she hadn’t known existed, awareness of a whole new dimension. It was like watching a plant grow at super-speed, unfolding and unravelling and becoming something new right before her eyes; it was a new life made manifest inside her head, a new existence coming into being one memory at a time; each of her senses came alive in turn, every part of her body perfectly attuned to this influx of new information whether she wanted it or not. It was hard enough to deal with all that; was it any wonder she couldn’t quite keep hold of her own identity as she pressed herself flat against the mattress or the floor and rode out the waves of his?_

_Joran enjoyed what he did. That much, she knew even before she tapped into the memory of feeling it. She knew, though she didn’t know how, but that was a far cry from remembering it, from having it inside of her, from feeling it as it surfaced within her. It was deeper now, more than enjoyment, more than pleasure; it was a newfound appreciation, a sense of relish for things that made her flinch and turn her away, smiles at thoughts that made her shake and delight at flavours that made her sick._

_She felt it, the sadistic enjoyment of other people’s suffering, even of her own, if it came down to it; pain was pain, after all, and what was the difference, in the end, between someone else screaming for mercy and the violence in her limbs as she twitched or her stomach as it clenched? It was all suffering, wasn’t it, and that was enough to bring out that perverse enjoyment, that thing she’d known but never understood until she remembered and learned and felt it._

_It was almost more than she could endure. She could stave off bad memories, past traumas, fear and loss and hurt, and all the rest of it; in seven lifetimes, she had been through the entire spectrum of emotion more times than anyone could count, and even now some of it still cut. She still struggled with Tobin’s self-inflicted suffering or Audrid’s losses or Emony’s injuries. On a good day, they’d give her strength, but on a bad one, they hurt like hell. She was used to bracing against those feelings, used to those moments where something in Jadzia’s life would echo back with resonances of Lela’s or Curzon’s, pain striking sharp and sudden, nostalgia fused with sorrow. She knew how to deal with that, knew when to brace against it and when to power through it, when to draw strength from it and when to push it aside._

_But this wasn’t like that at all. Everything here was new and strange, surfacing in fits and starts with none of the gentleness that came with a true joining. It hit her hard, without filters or fortifications, and there was so much that she could not hold it all at bay._

_This wasn’t integration like it was supposed to be. Integration between symbiont and host came nearly as naturally as breathing, synapses linking together, memories shared, two creatures perfectly connected. It was communication in the most fundamental way, a way that she had tried a thousand times to articulate, and failed every time. It defied explanation, and it certainly defied description. She couldn’t describe it; she could only appreciate it. But this wasn’t like that at all. This wasn’t a new host joining to an old symbiont, the host’s life and personality wrapping itself around the symbiont’s memories, both giving and taking and sharing. There was nothing to share here, because the host and symbiont were both in the same terrible place; neither of them knew what was happening. They were both remembering as if for the first time, and so neither of them could help the other to try and process it. It was pure undiluted chaos, an influx of information that was simultaneously new and old to both of them._

_It didn’t feel like learning or sharing or understanding. It didn’t feel like connecting or communicating. It didn’t feel like symbiosis at all. It felt like a violation, like an assault, memories and thoughts and feelings all being driven into her, like her mind was being pulled apart and a whole new existence forced inside of it, and the symbiont couldn’t help the host because it was going through the same thing itself._

_His memories were so violent, so brutal, so filled up with anger and hatred that she couldn’t fight them, couldn’t hold them down or hold them back, couldn’t do anything but ride them out and pray there would be something left of her when they were over. They pushed through what little she still had of her own identity and replaced it with the shards and splinters of his. They overwhelmed her, pulled her down and held her down, battering her with things she didn’t want until she came around on the floor of her quarters, minutes or hours later, smiling at the memory of pain, laughing at the thought of inflicting it and excited by the idea of feeling it._

_Those were the moments when she lost herself, where her thoughts were lost and hazy, where she didn’t just remember him but became him completely. She knew everything about him in those moments, by memory and by experience, just like any host, but it was all so much more present, so much more real, because the symbiont was lost as well._

_It wasn’t like Curzon, gently guiding her, massaging her identity and using his own to soothe the sore spots; it wasn’t like Audrid, nurturing and compassionate, or Emony with her stoic ruthlessness. It was just like Joran himself, savage and destructive. He had no interest in connecting, in integrating or becoming a part of something more than he could be alone. He didn’t want to communicate, not with the symbiont or with the young woman that had once been Jadzia. He didn’t want to share his memories, his thoughts, his feelings; he didn’t want to share anything. He wanted to force it all down her throat until she choked._

_And she did choke. Over and over again, she choked on him, on everything he was and everything he tried to make her. She choked and choked and choked, and it was only her survival instincts that kept it from killing her, breath rattling in her closed-up throat even as the part of her that was him laughed and smiled and took pleasure in it. That was the hard part, the part that drove her to the floor, because how was that possible? How could she be hating all of this and relishing it at the same time? Jadzia choked and Joran laughed, but they were both Dax, and she could not make that make sense._

_It was the longest forty-five hours of her life. It was the longest forty-five hours of any of their lives, all seven — no, eight — of them. She was alone, not because her friends didn’t care but because she had to be alone. If she was going to survive, it would have to be by herself. She couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Benjamin’s face, the empathy and the sorrow if he saw her in the throes of this, trying to piece together what she felt, how she felt, why she felt. She couldn’t bear Julian’s sympathy, the offer of painkillers that would do nothing or sedatives that would do even less, the cool medical professionalism steadying the shaky voice of a sweet and wonderful friend. She couldn’t bear the thought of anything but solitude, and so she locked herself up tight and safe, let the waves of his memories buffet her, toss her around, do what they would, safe at least in the certainty that nobody else would see._

_She let him unleash all his animal instincts on her, all that bloodlust and hate, all the things that had made him an unsuitable host, all the reasons why he should never have been joined in the first place, why this should never have happened, why the Symbiosis Commission had gone to such great lengths to write him out of history, to block him out of the symbiont’s mind, out of Jadzia’s, even out of Curzon’s._

_Curzon._

_He would have been able to handle this, she thought, dazed and dehydrated, face-down on the floor, cheek pressed against the rough_ Defiant _carpet. Jadzia was small and weak and helpless, but Curzon was a warrior. Curzon would have taken Joran’s memories by the throat, shouted them into submission, bent them to his will. He would have made them a part of him, but on his terms instead of Joran’s; Curzon would have been a Klingon about it. Curzon would have been brave and strong. He would have been honourable._

_She wasn’t Curzon. She knew that. But she had him inside of her just as she had Joran. She had Emony, too, with her boundless dedication, and Audrid with her quiet compassion, Lela with her resolve and Tobin with his focus and intelligence, Torias with his exuberance and… and Jadzia. She had Jadzia. No, more than that, she was Jadzia. And it didn’t matter that Jadzia didn’t have anything new to bring to the table, that she didn’t have anything at all, that she was weak and helpless and not like Curzon at all. It didn’t matter that she was just a silly little girl curled up on the floor, torn apart by someone else’s life. None of that mattered, because she was Jadzia and Jadzia was her._

_Dax remembered. But it was Jadzia who would survive._


	29. Chapter 29

“I wish I could remember.”

Dax blinked, shaking off the shadows of memory, hers and his and everything in between. She had almost forgotten where she was, and why she was there in the first place. The sound of her own voice cut through her thoughts, snapping her effortlessly back to reality, to the present, to where and who she was, the mirror universe and the Jadzia who needed her.

It also brought back far less pleasant things, a surge of fresher memories, less visceral than Joran’s but in their own way so much worse, the things she’d seen and done and become in this awful place. Suddenly, those long hours spent reeling from Joran’s resurfacing personality felt very far away, distant and foolish next to the twisted horror of this place. Suddenly, faced with visions of Keiko’s dirt-streaked face and the ringing of the Intendant’s laughter, being force-fed a psychopath’s personality felt utterly insignificant.

“You will,” she heard herself mumble, voice rusty and hoarse. “You will remember. You’ll remember everything.”

Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to look up and meet her own eyes, to see Jadzia and all her struggles, to look into a version of herself who was still relatively innocent and untainted. Jadzia wasn’t like her; she was a product of this universe. It may have broken Dax, but it had made her, and Dax didn’t have the strength to look up and see a version of herself who had been forged in the fires of this hell.

Jadzia was just as stubborn as she was, though, and wouldn’t let her avoid eye-contact. She leaned right in to squint into her face, studying and challenging. Dax didn’t bother trying to pull away, but the contact made her shudder in a way that didn’t feel entirely natural.

Personal space wasn’t often something she thought about; oh, she was conscious of other people’s, aware of the fact that not many were as comfortable as she was with close proximity. Curzon had learned that lesson a thousand times from a thousand incensed young women, and Jadzia had learned it anew when she stepped just a little too close to an edgy Major Kira not long after they’d both first arrived on Deep Space Nine. But when it came to her own personal space, she’d seldom had much cause to think of it at all. Seven lifetimes left little in the way of modesty, and she had embraced the lack of it.

She was acutely aware of it now, though, and she realised that she had been since she’d got back from Terok Nor. Her head was a messy place right now anyway, and she found herself utterly unable to shake off the shadows of that hellish place and the terrible things that had happened there. When Jadzia leaned in close, all Dax could think of was the Intendant. When Jadzia spoke, voice hushed and breath warm against the side of her head, it was the Intendant’s voice Dax heard, and when Jadzia touched her face, it was the Intendant’s bone-thin fingers that she felt. It was all she could think of, the things she did and the things she brought out in Dax. It took a great deal of effort not to flinch away from Jadzia’s closeness, and that feeling was strange and unfamiliar to someone as comfortable with physicality as Dax had always been.

“Hey.” Jadzia’s eyes were wide and much brighter than they should have been with such little light. Her hand slid down, gripping Dax’s arm tight enough to hurt, grounding her, and she forced a smile to try and bring her back.

Dax tried to smile back. Her jaw was tight, uncomfortable, a weary ache that made the expression feel more like a grimace than anything else, but she managed it just the same. “Hey.”

Neither of them said anything more for a very long time. Jadzia looked haunted, like she was the one going through all of this, like she really could remember everything Dax had told her, like those memories really were awakening inside her. And maybe they were, though honestly Dax doubted it; far more likely, the pain was just sympathetic, a frosted-glass reflection of Dax’s memories, her experiences and her Joran. Jadzia wanted so badly to be free from her hallucinations, Dax knew; she was so desperate to finally awaken the psychopath inside of her, to light up the memories she couldn’t grasp, as though that would be the end of it, as though remembering alone would be enough. Dax knew it didn’t work that way, and it was difficult to see the eagerness in Jadzia’s face, to know that it was directed in all the wrong places.

“You will remember,” she said again, watching sadly as Jadzia’s lips began to tremble; it was so much easier to focus on her mouth than her eyes, she realised, and wondered what that meant. “A part of you already remembers. It’s just… it’s not as easy for you because you’re not…” She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out Jadzia’s face, and thought of home. “Because you’re not where you should be. Because you’re stuck in a cave in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a bunch of people who don’t know the first thing about you, when you should be on Trill in the symbiont pools, learning who you are and what you were.”

It wasn’t an accusation, but she still felt Jadzia flinch and recoil as if it was. “You know I can’t go back there,” she muttered. “And you know why.”

“I do know,” Dax said softly, not opening her eyes. “And I’m not blaming you. Besides, it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done, and neither of us can change that. But you need to understand, and I need to explain it to you. You are going to struggle with this. You’re going to struggle, and you’re going to suffer, and you’re going to have to fight it so much harder than I ever did, because you don’t have the symbionts there to help you. You don’t have the Symbiosis Commission to talk you through it. Hell, you don’t even have a doctor, much less a Trill expert. All you have is a few doses of stolen benzocyatizine, and that might not be enough. You don’t have anything, Jadzia. And it’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner—”

“I don’t need anything,” Jadzia shot back, voice rough, the perfect picture of a stubborn Dax. “I don’t need the symbionts or the Symbiosis Commission or a damn doctor. I don’t need any of it. I have you.”

Dax sighed at the brush of cool lips against her forehead, her cheek, her jaw, wishing she could make this easier, not harder. “You know I can’t stay here forever,” she said.

“I know,” Jadzia said, very quietly. Dax opened her eyes, blinking against the passion she saw reflected in Jadzia’s. “You want to go back to your perfect universe, don’t you? You want to go home, back where it’s safe, where everything is neat and clean and wonderful, where nothing ever goes wrong and nobody ever has to fight for anything.”

Though the words carried the taint of bitterness, her tone was soft and sympathetic, like Dax was the one in need of help, not her. It got under Dax’s skin, itching like an irritant, and she felt compelled to scratch at it, to suffuse the discomfort with something rougher, something she could see and feel.

“It’s not perfect,” she muttered hotly. “It’s not always clean, and it’s not always safe. And I don’t think the Bajorans would agree that nobody there has ever had to fight for anything.”

Her pulse quickened as she thought of Kira. Her Kira, a Kira who had got her hands dirty and hated every moment of it, a Kira who had sent people to their deaths, even caused a few of her own, and hadn’t taken any pleasure from it. She missed her terribly, her smile and her faith, but at the same time it cut like a blade to think of her now. She couldn’t even imagine her face without seeing the Intendant’s, razor-edged and deadly, encouraging Dax to do terrible things, and then doing worse ones in her name. _Nerys,_ she thought, and felt dizzy.

“I don’t care about the Bajorans,” Jadzia hissed, and Dax could tell she was thinking of her own Kira too, that she was just as damaged by the Intendant and her blood-soaked hands as Dax had become. “The Bajorans have caused nothing but trouble. If there’s a universe out there where they’re on the receiving end of all this…” She shrugged, calloused and dismissive. “Well, it would serve them right, wouldn’t it?”

Dax wondered if Kira would say the same about the Cardassians, the tyrants who had oppressed her home for so long, the cruel and vicious creatures who had slaughtered and tortured her people, who had held Bajor in its clenched fist for all those years. Would she have been so quick to condemn this universe and its Alliance if the slaves labouring under the Intendant on Terok Nor had been Cardassian instead of human? Honestly, she didn’t think she wanted to know.

Jadzia leaned in again, so close that Dax could see past the brightness of her eyes, to the shadows behind them. “I’m not going to remember,” she murmured, “am I?”

Dax blinked, genuinely surprised. By the question itself, the unexpected suddenness of it, and how wearily resigned it sounded, by the intensity of Jadzia’s gaze, the inscrutable panic flickering across her features. It made no sense, and she couldn’t keep the confusion from trembling in her hands as she took Jadzia’s and held them tight.

“Why in the world would you think that?” she asked.

Jadzia held her gaze. “You’re getting ready to leave,” she said simply. Dax opened her mouth to protest, but Jadzia pulled her hand free and pressed a finger to her lips to gently silence her. “Don’t bother trying to deny it. It’s written all over your face, the way you talk, everything. It’s all over you, and you’re not as good at hiding as you think you are.” She turned away, biting down on her lip. “You’ve convinced yourself that you’ve done everything you can, and now you’re giving up on me.”

“I’m not giving up on you,” Dax insisted, caught between anger and guilt. “I want to leave, yes, but it’s not because of you. It’s this place, not you. It’s this screwed-up universe and what it’s done to me. It’s… it’s a lot of things. But it’s not you. Okay? It’s not you.”

She thought of the Intendant again, of Garak, of Keiko and Smiley O’Brien. She wished she could say their names, give voice to everything she felt for them, but what good would it do even if she did? How could she explain to Jadzia how much it hurt? How could she make her see what she saw when she looked at all those familiar faces, friends twisted into terrible shapes, kind souls bent and broken until they became something terrible, beaten down and mistreated? It was kill or be killed in this universe, and Dax had been on both sides. How could she tell Jadzia that? How could she hope to make her understand?

Before she came here, Kira Nerys had been her strength. She was a rock, the voice of reason and certainty, someone who had been exactly where Dax was, who had endured what she’d endured and come out of it stronger and better. Kira had hurt and healed, and that gave Dax more strength — more _faith_ — than anything else she’d known. Her eyes had lit up with compassion and empathy, with understanding in its truest and purest sense, with friendship and affection. She was everything, and if only for a few precious moments she had let Dax believe that she could be everything too, that she could survive the violence inside of her, that she could push past it, and break through, that she might yet overcome it and salvage some piece of herself that was worth something.

Kira had done that. _Nerys_ had done that. Where Julian and Benjamin had only been friends, where Dax herself had been torn up inside and confused, lost to her conflicted identity, Nerys had reminded her of who she was, who she should be, and who she would become again. She hadn’t saved her, but she had let her believe that one day she might have the strength to save herself. How could Dax expect Jadzia to know what that was like? How could she know the differences between Nerys and the Intendant when she didn’t know them both? How could she look at Jadzia, this woman who shared her face and name, who shared the very same conflicted identity, and expect her to understand how much the Intendant had taken from her?

How could she expect her to understand any of it? How could Jadzia possibly comprehend how much damage this universe and its people had done? How could she hope to imagine the damage that Dax had done to this place in return, the life she’d taken and the lives she’d ruined? How could Jadzia possibly understand any of that? And how could Dax make her?

Jadzia’s eyes were flashing now, bright again but this time with danger. Dax recognised the spark of anger in her, the telltale touch of Joran’s irrationality flickering beneath the surface of her skin, the way she balled her fists, the twitch in her eye, the way she shivered at the bite of pain when she moved her injured wrist in just the right way. The anger wasn’t really her own, and Dax knew it probably wasn’t really directed at her either, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with, and it certainly didn’t make it any less painful to watch the hurt and betrayal paint itself across a face so like her own, ferocity tightening her jaw and clenching her teeth.

“Jadzia…” she said, keeping her voice low.

But Jadzia wasn’t listening to her any more. She’d probably stopped listening after she’d accused Dax of giving up on her. If so, that made it dangerous. It was one thing to talk her back from the edge in a good moment, but if she thought the one person she could rely on had given up on her, there was nothing left to hold her up when she gave up on herself.

Dax took a breath, reaching for her, but Jadzia was no more interested in that than she was in what she had to say. She lurched to her feet and swung away, putting some distance between them and pacing the room in a desperate attempt at holding herself in check. Dax watched her as she moved, studying the line of her spine, rigid and straight, the shaking of her fists at her sides, the feral noises snarling from her lips. For a moment or two, neither of them spoke at all; Dax could hear Jadzia’s breathing, deep and careful, and knew she really was trying regain some kind of control over herself, trying so hard to prove that she could, that she was strong enough, that she was better than this.

“Jadzia,” Dax said again, stepping forwards. “I’m not giving up on you. I’m not.”

Jadzia’s breathing was laboured. “I want to remember,” she growled, as though she hadn’t heard anything Dax had said at all. “Why can’t I remember?”

“Because you’re trying too hard.” Dax tried to explain, tried to calm her down, though she could tell by now that it would be fruitless. “You’re trying so hard to remember, you’re not letting yourself feel.”

Jadzia turned to face her again, and the anguish on her face tore the air from Dax’s lungs. “I don’t want to feel.”

That hurt, cutting into a part of her that remembered all too well, and Dax let the pain show so that Jadzia would see how completely she did understand. “I know,” she whispered. “I know you don’t want to feel. I know it scares the hell out of you, even just thinking about it. And you’re right to be scared. It’s good that you’re scared, because it’s an awful thing. It’s the worst thing you’ll ever go through, the worst thing you’ll ever know. But it’s so important, Jadzia. It’s just as important as the memories and the hallucinations and everything else you’re struggling with. It’s so important, and you have to let it happen. It’s not enough just to remember, even if you could. You have to let yourself feel, or you’ll never get through this at all.”

“No.” The word came out almost like a plea.

Dax knew that, too. She knew that _‘no’_ , and she knew the tremor that went with it, the hitch in her breath and the ghosts in her eyes. She knew the fear that Jadzia didn’t want to admit, the horror at the thought of indulging those things she could barely make sense of. Dax had been afraid because she’d known what it felt like, but Jadzia was afraid because she didn’t. Dax was scared of herself, but Jadzia was scared of the unknown, of diving into black waters and not knowing how deep they were or whether she could swim. It frightened her more than anything else, the inability to understand. That was why she wanted so badly to remember; that was why it was so damn important to her. Dax understood that, too, but she would not let her indulge those fears. Between them, they’d come too far.

“Jadzia.” She took her by the shoulders. “You have to understand what’s going on inside of you. It’s not just his memories. That’s just one small part of it. I could give you Joran’s life story ten times over, but it’s not going to be enough unless you’re willing to take the rest of him as well.” She took a moment to study Jadzia’s face, to look deep into her eyes and seek out any hint of the scientist, the intelligent young Jadzia that she herself had once been, but all she saw was anger. “He’s not just a lifeless collection of memories or a thing that happened to the symbiont. He’s a _person_. He lived and he died, and he thought and he felt. Terrible things, yes… horrible, awful, frightening things… but you can’t just ignore them because they scare you.”

It was only as she said the words that she realised she wasn’t talking to Jadzia any more, and her own fear lodged like a rock in her throat.

“They don’t scare me.” Jadzia’s voice was flat, furious. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“Yes, you are,” Dax pressed; she realised that she was being baited, that Jadzia was aching to lash out, that she was still struggling with everything she had to keep from giving in to the anger, and that some part of her was just itching for an excuse to stop trying. “You’re scared, and that’s all right. It’s understandable. Hell, it’d be reckless and stupid if you weren’t scared right now. But you can’t hide from what’s happening inside you. Not if you want to get through it.”

She reached out, let a hand rest on Jadzia’s shoulder, and watched as her entire body stiffened. “Don’t touch me,” Jadzia gritted out in an urgent sort of plea. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Dax was used to hearing her own voice when Jadzia spoke, but this time it was her own words too, the echo of what she’d said to the Intendant, the way she’d begged her to stop indulging Joran’s anger, how she’d told her that it was dangerous, that it was serious. She remembered far too vividly how the Intendant had pushed her, wrung the anger out of her like water from a wet rag, driven her to the edge of her control, to the edge of her sanity, and how they’d both relished it.

“Yes, you do,” she said, and the truth of it cut keener than a blade. “You do want to hurt me. You’d give anything to hurt me. Wouldn’t you?”

“No.” Jadzia swallowed, and the line of her throat rippled in convulsive little spasms, like she was trying to hold down so much more than blind rage. “I wouldn’t. I don’t. I _won’t_.”

Dax sighed. “You do,” she said again. “You do want to hurt me. It’s all you can think about. And that’s all right.”

She took a step forwards, closing the space that Jadzia had put between them, taking her by the hand that wasn’t injured and pulling her in close. Her own body flinched at the contact, still fighting off the unexpected reflex that balked at physical contact, but she pushed her own feelings to the side and focused everything she had on Jadzia.

“Don’t,” Jadzia said again; she sounded just as urgent as before, but this time it was not a plea.

“Tell me,” Dax pressed, holding her. “Tell me how it feels.”

Jadzia gritted her teeth. She tried to pull away, but Dax wouldn’t let her. They would probably have been fairly evenly matched under normal circumstances, but Jadzia only had one good arm and Dax could tell that she was dangerously close to panic. It didn’t take much strength to hold her in place, to keep their bodies pressed together, and she sucked in her own breath as she felt the heat rising between them, Jadzia’s need for violence finding a mate in Dax’s own chest, her pulse pounding in her ears. She had better control now than she had before she’d come here, that much was true, but the fire was still inside her just the same, and it was ignited by Jadzia’s, stoked even hotter by the warmth of her body, the way her chest rose and fell against her own, the scent of blood heavy on the air between them…

It was in her as well. She could feel it humming beneath the surface of her skin, like plasma and electricity arcing across each other, setting off sparks in her veins. Anger and bloodlust, the ache for violence, though blessedly without the hate this time. That was progress, she supposed, but it didn’t make it any less painful when she gave in to the urge to bite down on her lip, to draw blood and moan at the taste like she had so many times before.

It would be so easy to goad Jadzia into a fight, she thought, so easy to talk her into taking the first swing, to corner her and coax her, to bring out the worst in her and justify the same in herself. She smiled a little at the thought, then immediately caught herself, catching her breath and forcing herself to remember why she was here. Hadn’t she had enough of this? Hadn’t she led enough with her fists already? She was here to help Jadzia, not to use her rage as fuel to slake her own thirst.

There was a kind of triumph that came with pushing the feeling aside, turning away from her own rising violence and focusing on Jadzia’s instead, a kind of vindication in remembering where and who she was. For as long as Joran had been a part of her (longer, really, and she thought back to that hate-filled day or two on Deep Space Nine, before she knew what was happening to her), it had been a struggle to hold his influence at bay, taking every ounce of strength she had to stifle his emotions and his instincts and pull herself back from the brink.

She didn’t want Jadzia to know how hard it still was, even after all the help she’d had just to get this far. She knew how frightened Jadzia was of that, how much it terrified her to look at Dax and see her future, to watch every flicker and every falter and wonder if it would be her doom, if this was her destiny too, if she would stumble and fall just like Dax. She knew how deeply the idea troubled her, and she didn’t want her to know how many times she’d lost control already. Jadzia couldn’t know how hard the struggle was, even now; she couldn’t know how easily the Intendant had dragged Dax’s rage out of her, or how eagerly Dax’s body had responded. She couldn’t know how invigorating the anger was, how intoxicating the hate, how arousing the violence. She couldn’t see how far they both had to go.

And so, Dax did the only thing she could, forcing it down and holding it at bay, keeping herself under control. She did it, and she felt all the more powerful for it.

She did it for Jadzia, the woman still struggling in her arms, the chest heaving and gasping against her own, the mirror image fighting down the same demons from a different side. She did it all for her, because she was here to help, because she was the only one who could. She did it all for Jadzia… but still, as the anger imploded, leaving her vision clear, the floodwaters gradually receding and leaving her almost at peace, she couldn’t deny that the victory felt deeply personal. It was for Jadzia, yes, but it belonged to Dax.

“Jadzia…” she pressed, finding new strength in the name where just a few minutes earlier it had chilled her to the bone.

“What?” There was fury in the question, a lone syllable shot through with savage strain. “You know how it feels. Why the hell are you asking me?”

Dax held her close for another few moments, then let her go. She took a small step back, not putting any real distance between them but giving Jadzia a little space to pull back, to ready herself to take a swing if she wanted to. She let her arms drop to her sides, body exposed and open, limbs slack and expression perfectly peaceful. She could see the pain lining Jadzia’s face, tempering the rage; her jaw was tight and deathly pale, fists clenching and unclenching spasmodically at her sides, and she was trembling all over in a hopeless bid at holding herself together, fighting with everything she had in her to keep from surrendering to the anger, to keep her head above the crashing waves.

It was a pointless struggle; Dax only needed to glance at her to know that. She had been through moments just like this, more times than she could count by now. She remembered all those hours lost in the holosuite, fingers calloused and muscles sore from swinging a bat’leth for hours on end. She remembered thin rivers of blood carved into her palm, remembered swallowing the stuff down as she bit it from her lip, remembered bruises raised on her knuckles as she pounded the wall. She had been here before a thousand times or more, and she could tell by the tremors paling Jadzia’s knuckles that she could not win this any more than Dax herself had. It didn’t matter how hard she fought, or for how long; eventually she would exhaust herself and Joran would take over. Eventually, whether she liked it or not, she would take that swing. Dax knew, and she waited.

When it finally came, it didn’t take either one of them by surprise. Jadzia lunged at her, swaying unsteadily on her feet, as though she was drunk. Dax didn’t bother to duck or parry, though she could easily have done either, simply stood there and took it as Jadzia swung, not with her good hand but with the injured one. The scream as the blow connected, catching Dax fast and hard across the jaw, feeding her own temper, came not from her but from Jadzia as the pain of her broken wrist drove her back down to her knees. Dax was the one who reeled and staggered back, but Jadzia was the one in agony.

Dax took less than a moment to catch her balance, waiting just long enough for for her vision to clear and her balance to steady itself, then immediately dropped to her knees as well, though for her it was by choice. Jadzia was huddled on the floor, cradling her injured wrist, and as Dax reached for her she could hear a string of profanities spilling from her lips in languages she didn’t know. Jadzia was hurt, though at least it was by her own hand this time, and the pain just made her even more angry than she had been before. Dax could tell that she was furious with her, enraged that Dax would let her take that swing, betrayed and upset that she hadn’t tried to stop her. Dax hadn’t expected her to be thankful, but the betrayal in her eyes as she looked up hit much harder than the blow.

“Jadzia—”

“Why?” she demanded, looking up through tear-streaked eyes, and flinching out of the way as Dax tried to touch her. “Why did you make me do that?”

“I didn’t make you do anything,” Dax said gently, and felt another chill pass over her as she remembered the Intendant saying the very same thing to her. “You did it all by yourself, and it’s good that you did. You can’t fight it all the time. I couldn’t either.” She grimaced, pulling her hands back and folding them loosely in her lap. “Though next time, maybe you should think about using your good hand?”

Jadzia hissed, a wounded-animal sound. “Don’t tell me the best way to hurt you,” she snarled. “What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to make you understand.” Dax sighed. “Jadzia, you have to… you have to connect with what you’re feeling. You can’t keep trying to hold it back. If you do, it’ll just explode out of you in other ways. Believe me, I know.”

She felt her jaw go tight, shattering the illusion of calm she’d worked so hard to exude. It was all so easy, preaching to Jadzia like she had the faintest idea what she was talking about, like she had any right to tell her what to do, how to feel, what to remember. It was so easy telling someone else to engage and connect, to become one with the creature inside her, so easy to insist that Jadzia do all the things that she herself could not, so easy to try and make her into everything Dax herself couldn’t be. It was so easy to be the teacher, wasn’t it? But where was all this insight when she was the one who needed to learn?

It was even harder now, with the Intendant’s voice still ringing in her ears, coaxing and challenging, pressing her to indulge herself, to indulge Joran, to indulge everything, doing to Dax all the things that Dax was doing to Jadzia now but for all the wrong reasons.

For the Intendant, of course, it was a game, a source of pleasure and entertainment. She played with Dax’s anger because it turned her on, because she could sense her burning discomfort, because she knew that she couldn’t fight the way it aroused her too. The Intendant was a sadist, as much of a tyrant between the sheets as she was among her workers, and she thrived on rage in exactly the same way that Joran did. When she goaded Dax into feeding her anger, effortlessly bringing out the violence again and again, it was like hearing his words in Kira’s voice. There was nothing positive, no encouragement or validation; she was just like him, evoking the responses not for Dax’s sake but for her own sick pleasure.

This was different, she told herself, though it didn’t make her feel any better. This wasn’t some perverse fantasy played out in blood and bruises between the sheets. This was for Jadzia’s own good. Dax, at least, had some understanding of what Jadzia was going through, what she was fighting, what it meant and how it felt. She knew Joran with terrifying intimacy; she knew his thoughts and his feelings, and they were as frightening to her as they were to Jadzia, if in different ways. It frightened her because she understood, but it frightened Jadzia because she did not.

The Intendant had wanted Dax to drown in her anger, to fall prey to her violence and allow herself to be manipulated by it. She had wanted to stand back and watch as she became a dark and dangerous thing, a harbinger of hatred that could be used and abused, twisted and turned to suit the Intendant’s purposes, a pretty new puppet, but one that actually enjoyed having its strings pulled. That wasn’t what Dax wanted for Jadzia; she would die before she let that happen to her. She didn’t want Jadzia to drown in this, didn’t want her to become something she wasn’t, didn’t want her to break beneath the weight of Joran and everything he was. She didn’t want to make Jadzia lose herself; she wanted to help her find herself. That was the difference between them, and though it hurt to see it through in such a similar way, that difference was everything.

“Jadzia,” she said again, but Jadzia wouldn’t look at her. “You can’t fight something if you don’t understand it. You know that. You have to understand it if you want to—”

“I understand it just fine.” She was worryingly pale, and Dax had a feeling that the pain in her wrist was the only thing stopping her from lashing out again.

Still disoriented from the blow she’d taken, Dax turned to look for the painkiller hypospray; she swayed a little as she reached for it, and needed a moment to regain her equilibrium before turning back to let Jadzia see her. Without asking or waiting for an invitation, she pressed hypo to the side of her neck, applying another small dose and grimacing as the guilt struck anew. She’d tried to use as little of the stuff as possible, hoping against hope that she would have some small remainder to return to Smiley when this was all done, but already the hypo was mostly empty. Still, even if it was shameless and selfish, she couldn’t help feeling that it was almost worth the wasted resources for the way that Jadzia’s shoulders slumped with relief, soft little gasps rippling out of her as she straightened her spine and looked up at her through streaming eyes.

“You should have used your other arm,” Dax pointed out again as she set the hypo down again. “It would have been less painful.”

“For me, maybe,” Jadzia muttered, a hot blush creeping up her neck as she glared down at the splint on her wrist. “But it would’ve been more painful for you.”

“I was prepared for it,” Dax reminded her quietly. “You don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

Jadzia didn’t say anything, but at least she wasn’t arguing this time. She just crouched there, holding her injured wrist and breathing hard; whether it was from exertion or pain or the lingering revenant of anger, Dax couldn’t tell, and she didn’t try to guess. The end result was the same no matter the cause, and so she didn’t try to interfere. All she could do was hover as close as Jadzia would allow and let her sit there in silence for as long as she wanted.

“It’s not fair,” Jadzia muttered at last, seeming to realise that Dax wouldn’t say anything until she gave her something to reply to. “It isn’t fair that I don’t remember, but I still have to feel. Aren’t the hallucinations enough?”

Dax mustered a half-hearted smile. She leaned in, cupping the side of Jadzia’s face, brushing the curve of her jaw with her thumb and watching as her eyelids fluttered. “Did you ever think that it might help a little if you stopped struggling so hard?” she asked, and Jadzia hissed. “Where do you think the hallucinations came from in the first place?”

“You’re the _scientist_.” She spat the word out, like a bad taste or an offensive slur. “And you’re supposed to be the expert on all this stuff. Why don’t you tell me?”

It was harder than she expected to put into words, and Dax masked the need to collect her thoughts by picking up the tricorder once again and running another quick scan of Jadzia’s isoboramine levels. She’d kind of hoped that the spike in temper would mean that they’d dropped again, necessitating another quick shot of benzocyatizine, but that wasn’t the case. According to the readouts, her levels were steady, stable, and strong. For Jadzia, that was good news, but for Dax, who desperately needed a distraction, it left her hands feeling empty, uncomfortable and out of place.

“All right,” she said at last, keeping her voice as steady as Jadzia’s isoboramine. “You keep talking about them like they’re the disease, but they’re not. They’re just a symptom of something else, and honestly, that’s not a disease either. You just… you keep focusing on little bits and pieces, the hallucinations and the loss of control, and you don’t stop to try and understand how or why they might be connected. You take everything in isolation and assume that remembering where it all came from will somehow make it all better. But it’s not a disease, Jadzia, and there isn’t a cure. Remembering won’t take it all away.”

“It’ll be a start,” Jadzia argued petulantly.

“Maybe. But even if it is, you’ll still have a long way to go. It’s not going to stop you from getting angry. It’s not going to give you some miraculous new wealth of self-control, or help you to understand these new feelings inside of you. Even when you do stop hallucinating, that won’t be end of it.” She let her eyes slide shut for a moment, digging deep and bracing herself for the confession that would wound them both. “There isn’t an end. That’s the heart of it, Jadzia. That’s what you need to accept. There is no end.”

“There has to be,” Jadzia insisted, crushed and desperate. “You can’t come in here and tell me it’s hopeless. You can’t just look at me like that and tell me I have nothing, that all I have to look forward to is breaking down and pounding the wall until my knuckles break. You can’t tell me that all I have to look forward to is you.”

Dax shrugged off the insult. “What you have to look forward to is up to you,” she said simply. “Have you stopped to think about what you’ll beed to do when the hallucinations stop and you can’t hide behind them any more? What good will it do you to find sanctuary from one thing only to get eaten alive by the rest? Do you really think it’ll all be over just because you’ll be able to wake up in the morning without strangling someone?”

Jadzia looked incredibly bitter; Dax could see the anger rising in her again, jealousy so close to hate. “It’ll be more than I have right now.”

“That’s dangerous thinking,” Dax said with a sigh. “I know the hallucinations are what you’re most afraid of, but they’re not the only thing there is. It’s not the only part of him you need to deal with. Hell, it’s not even a particularly large part.”

“Not for you, maybe.” Jadzia’s expression turned dark, not with anger this time, but with something else, something that Dax couldn’t make out. “But it is for me. I don’t have a bunch of friends to hold my hand and say they understand when I start hallucinating my hands around their necks. I don’t have a perfect universe full of perfect people ready to jump in and hold me down when I lose control, willing to drop everything to make me better, so desperate to help that they’d do anything for it. All I have is a chauvinistic bastard who would sooner run off for someone like you than deal with me himself.”

She stood up, and Dax tried not to notice the way her legs shook under her. “I’m sorry,” she murmured emptily.

“Don’t be sorry,” Jadzia snapped. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? Anger keeps you safe in a universe like this. Violence is a way of life. Just because that’s the thing that scares you doesn’t mean it scares me.”

“I know that,” Dax said softly, rising to her feet as well, stepping forwards, refusing to let Jadzia back away. “And you’re really, really lucky that it doesn’t. But just because you’re not scared doesn’t mean you’re not struggling to deal with it. Just because you’re not scared doesn’t mean you don’t have a good reason to be.”

Surprising them both this time, Jadzia lashed out again.

She struck with her good hand this time, but it was still slow and sluggish, and Dax deflected the blow easily. Her reflexes were sharp, honed by too many hours fighting holographic Klingons, and it took far more restraint than she expected to keep from throwing out a counterattack. As it was, she settled for holding her ground, making no effort to step out of reach, or to try and stop Jadzia coming at her again, but also not actively encouraging her this time either. She didn’t have to do anything, she knew; Jadzia was lost again, and there was nothing Dax could do to bring her back now. She could see the clouds gathering behind her eyes, greys circling through the lightning-strike blue, and she knew it was only a matter of time before the storm broke and the rain of blows hammered down on them both.

“Tell me,” she urged. “Tell me what you feel.”

Jadzia closed her eyes, fists balled and strain trembling through her limbs. “Hate,” she whispered. “So much _hate_.”

And there it was, like a floodgate had opened, the rain of blows Dax had anticipated. It was weak and half-hearted, just as futile as she’d expect from someone still struggling against herself, but fortified and made ruthless by rage and violence, all those feelings that Dax knew so well. She ducked and parried the blows as they came, all the while trying to stem the blood rising hot in her own veins, trying to keep from taking advantage when Jadzia dropped her shoulder or exposed her midsection or made any one of a thousand stupid mistakes. It would be so easy to overwhelm her, to drive her down to the floor and beat her to oblivion, to justify it with _‘she attacked me first’_ or _‘it was self-defence’_. She could get away with it too, but she wouldn’t. She was better than that. For Jadzia’s sake, this time, she had to be.

Though she favoured her good arm this time, Jadzia still used the injured one a time or two, driving deep with a howl of pain when Dax let her guard drop and showed her midsection. Dax recognised the pattern to her choices, the way she used her wounded arm only when the blow would otherwise be devastating; even when she was at her most uncontrolled, some little corner of her psyche kicked in to minimise the damage, some tiny part that knew who she was and what she was doing. She would sooner hurt herself than hurt Dax, and in those moments when it was truly one or the other, she made the same brutal choice every time.

Every time she hit with that arm, she screamed, a dying animal howl of raw and unrepentant agony that caught and stuttered in her throat. Dax recognised that as well, and it tore through her chest more effectively than any fist. _Self-flagellation,_ she realised, and remembered the sweet sting of it herself, steel sliding over skin as she squeezed the blade of the knife, the rich taste as she bit blood from her lip, the cries that tore out of her as she beat the walls until they beat her back, exhausted and spent and blinded. She remembered the sickening solace of the pain, how it had kept her grounded when nothing else could.

She wondered if Jadzia was feeling the same bittersweet comfort in her own agony, if the unhinged quality of her screams was perhaps a note of relief, if she was using her wounded hand to keep herself grounded just as Dax herself had used whatever tools she could find to bathe herself in her own pain. Or perhaps this was a different kind of self-flagellation, the kind that came with punishment, torturing herself for feeling so much anger and hate in the first place. It would have been easier on them both if she’d just used the knife, Dax thought sadly, and tried not to lose herself to the memory, the tantalising shadow of blood slicking her palms.

She could see the knife now, sheathed safely and securely at Jadzia’s hip, forgotten or simply ignored, and couldn’t help wondering why she hadn’t thought to use it instead of her fists. The blindness of rage, she supposed, coupled with the need for violence and brutality, for bone against bone and flesh tearing at flesh. The need to inflict pain was one thing, but this was more about violence than effect. A knife was too civilised, too precise and, for Jadzia, too poetic.

Jadzia was a wild thing right now, much wilder than Dax herself had ever been, even in her worst moments, curled up and wailing on the holosuite floor after she’d pushed past her breaking point and found that it still wasn’t enough. She had struggled with herself, with what she was doing and what it meant, but Jadzia wasn’t struggling now at all. Jadzia was entirely free, unfettered by Dax’s morality, and the violence in her reflected that in a potent way. She was ferocious and feral, swinging furiously but with little effect, too angry to make much impact on anything at all, and it wasn’t particularly difficult for Dax to simply plant her feet, to patiently hold her ground and wait for her to drive herself to exhaustion. Where Dax’s rage was like water on a constant boil, endlessly simmering and spitting and feeding itself, Jadzia’s was like a forest fire, powerful and destructive, and that kind of heat always wore itself out eventually.

Exhaustion alone wasn’t enough, though, and it did little to stem the tide of blows. Jadzia’s legs gave out beneath her and she crumpled back to the floor, but still she swung her fists, crazed and ineffectual arcs of powerless aggression that Dax caught effortlessly. She went down too, dropping carefully to her knees as Jadzia dropped, holding tight and cushioning the impact as they hit the floor. Jadzia was still howling and flailing, but there wasn’t enough strength left in her to do anything useful, and it didn’t take much for Dax to keep her restrained, safely locked up in her arms.

She wanted to say so many things — warnings and promises, maybe even _‘I told you so’_ if it would get the point across — but she couldn’t bring herself to speak at all. Anything she said would just cut all the more deeply, and Jadzia couldn’t take any more pain just then. She was beyond exhausted by now, voice raw and throaty as she roared her pain and her fury and everything else she was feeling, and Dax could tell that the only reason she hadn’t keeled over and fallen into blessed unconsciousness was because Joran was not done with her yet.

Well, she decided, pulling her in even more closely, that was just fine. Dax wasn’t done with her either.

“It’s all right,” she murmured, settling for simplicity. Her voice was low, but it carried easily over the jagged edges of Jadzia’s faltering cries; she hated how hollow the placation sounded, but it was the only thing she trusted herself to say. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

But Jadzia was not so easily placated as Dax herself had been when she’d been the one falling apart in her arms, and when she shook her head and looked up, there was violence in every part of her, serrated and scarring.

“No, it’s not,” she said, voice rusted; she no longer had any strength in her body, and so she finally stopped struggling. “It’s not all right. You… _you_ were supposed to make it all right. You were supposed to make it better. You… you…”

Dax tried not to take the accusation too personally, tried to remember that Jadzia wasn’t really herself, that she wouldn’t be herself until her mind exhausted itself as thoroughly as her body had. “I’m trying,” she said instead. “I’m doing the best I can.”

She sighed, thinking back to her own fits of incomprehensible temper, when she’d accused Benjamin of trying to cheat her at chess and then accused Kira of taking sides. She hadn’t really been in control of herself back then, though she’d deluded herself that she was, and she knew that the same was true of Jadzia now. That feeling wasn’t like the hallucinations that came afterwards, or the violent urges that had followed them; it was a maddening in-between phase, an irrational moodiness and temper that didn’t feel natural but didn’t run deep enough to be truly frightening either, like the side-effect of a hormonal imbalance or the reflex response to a bumped head. Dax remembered how exhausting it had been, how frustrating, and she leaned in to press her lips to Jadzia’s temple.

“You’re not making it easy, you know,” she said lightly. “You’re so resistant, so stubborn, so…” She chuckled, pulling back with a wry smile as she shook her head. “…so much like me.”

The words seemed to strike a place somewhere deep inside Jadzia; she sobered instantly, the anger bleeding out of her so quickly that it made Dax’s head spin, replaced by something she’d never seen in her own eyes before. It was a strange kind of emotion, despair mingling with hope, disbelief touched by faith, a beauty so unexpected and so rare that it stole her breath for a moment and made her think of Nerys in that moment on the runabout.

“Am I?” Jadzia asked, so softly that Dax almost didn’t hear. “Am I really like you?”

Dax didn’t know how to respond to that. In truth, even Jadzia herself didn’t seem to know whether she was hoping that it was true or that it wasn’t. She looked trapped, like an animal caught between a predator and a hunter, unsure whether it would prefer to be slain by one of its own or taken captive by something unknown and unfamiliar. She couldn’t figure out whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, whether it was good that she had her strength, or bad that she was so weak, and Dax wished she could encourage her one way or the other, but the reality was that even she wasn’t sure herself. She wouldn’t wish her problems on anyone, but they both knew it was out of either of their hands. Neither of them had any choice in this, and Dax was as uncertain as Jadzia as to whether she was a success story to strive for or a doomed failure to shy away from.

For a long moment, she had no idea what to say. Reinforce her hope, or shatter it; either way she would run the risk of undoing what little good she’d done so far. In the end, she just shrugged and clawed a path to the middle ground as best she could.

“Well, you are me,” she reminded them both, guarded and cautious. “Is it really so surprising that you’re like me as well?” Jadzia shrugged, but didn’t say anything. “Look. We both know that we’re not the same, at least not on any meaningful level. We’re fighting very different enemies, both out there—” She gestured out past the hanging curtain, to the rebel base beyond, then brought back her hand to press against her own temples. “—and in here. We’re fighting different wars for different reasons, and in different ways. But we’re still Dax, both of us, and we have the same weapons.”

Jadzia glanced down at the knife sheathed at her hip. She drew it out and let it lay flat across her palm, cool metal gleaming harmlessly, but comforting them both just by being there. Dax knew that feeling very well, but it still struck hard when Jadzia turned her face back up towards her.

“Did you use it?” she whispered, bright-eyed and breathy.

The memories rose up sharp and sudden in Dax’s chest, not Joran’s perversions this time but her own. Cold steel sliding over colder skin, blood welling up between her fingers and across her palm, shallow channels slashed out over her ribs, long thin gashes standing stark against faded spots. Lonely hours in an empty ship, carving out space in the silence with the serrated blade dancing across her palm. The look on the Intendant’s face when she saw it for the first time, then again as she took it to her ribs, her jaw, her hip. The bruises left over from her dalliance with the wall, the same rock face she stared up at now, no different than it had been a week ago, if a little cleaner. _“Who dared to mark my property?”_ , the Intendant had asked, and Dax shuddered now just as she had back then.

“I didn’t hurt anyone.” It was a weak answer to a question neither of them wanted to hear. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“It’s not,” Jadzia answered flatly, though Dax already knew that. “You know what I’m asking.”

Dax gazed down at the knife, curved and jagged, glinting in the half-light. Beautiful and deadly, intoxicating and addictive. Suddenly, she found herself aching for it all over again. Though she’d put the need behind her, pushed past the urgency and the rising heat, suddenly she felt like her entire body was on fire all over again, nerves suddenly lit up like plasma in a warp core, longing for the sweet pain, the control. The anger was easier to deal with now, but it still tugged at her every now and then, and holding Jadzia through her own explosions hadn’t helped to keep it at bay.

She longed to just lean in, to reach over and grab the knife, to take it by the blade once more and squeeze until Jadzia wasn’t the only one screaming, until Jadzia wasn’t the only one bleeding and hurting, until she wasn’t the only one torn apart by the violence inside of her. She wanted to. Even now, after everything she’d been through, everything she’d seen and done and endured, everything that had happened here, even now, she still felt the pull of it.

But she resisted. Not for Jadzia’s sake, not now, but for her own. She didn’t reach for the knife, didn’t take it, and she didn’t use it. That was behind her now; it didn’t matter that she wanted to indulge it, because the time where she’d had no choice was past now, and she could not go back.

If she wanted to return to her universe, that clean and perfect universe that Jadzia so resented, she had to remember what it was like to live there. The people of that universe, her people… they weren’t like the people here; they didn’t carry knives at all, much less turn their blades back on themselves, cut themselves open and try to bleed their problems dry. They had other outlets, better and safer. They had holosuites and martial arts, they had doctors and therapists, they had friends and family, people who wanted to help. They had everything this universe didn’t, and Dax would not surrender to the thralls of this dark place when that lighter one was her home.

Jadzia was staring at her, eyes wide and jaw white. Dax recognised the tight-lipped strain of someone desperately seeking a distraction to keep from losing control all over again. There wasn’t enough strength left in her to even climb to her feet, much less start another assault, but Dax knew from experience that knowing it wouldn’t stop her from being afraid of it. Knowledge was a small comfort, she’d found, when her insides felt ready to explode.

She remembered feeling that way herself, remembered the urgency and the panic, the need to be alone, to find somewhere safe and solitary to curb the urge, remembered the fear of what she would do if she didn’t get away and lock herself up in time. She remembered long days and longer nights lost in the holosuite, hacking and slashing at imaginary opponents, indulging the violence in the only way she could think of, the only way that was safe. Hologram after hologram, distraction after distraction, hour after hour, anything to keep from losing control.

Jadzia didn’t have that safety net. There were no holosuites in this place, and she didn’t have the freedom of solitude. The rebels were crammed into this cave like cattle, and privacy was a luxury far beyond their means. The knife was the only thing she had. Those shallow little cuts, those beads of blood… they were all Jadzia had to keep her head above water, and Dax’s heart ached to look at her now, to see the anger and the fear, the desperation. She wanted to use the knife too, she could tell, just like Dax had used it all those times. She wanted so desperately to use it, to set up her own kind of safety net, to support herself when Dax was gone and there was nobody else to hold her. She want it so desperately, and she wanted Dax to tell her that it was all right.

“Well?” Jadzia’s voice cracked, lips trembling. “Did you?”

Dax thought of pain. She thought of pleasure. She thought of them both, the two of them together, the sweet release of that beautiful blade across her palm, pain touched by pleasure, relief turning the sensation even hotter. She thought of her hands around the Intendant’s throat, the throbbing urge to turn around and punch the wall until she and it were both soaked in blood, the intoxication of being in control. She thought of all the things she’d done to hold the violence at bay, all the ways she’d let herself indulge it under the pretence of venting it safely, all the ways she’d turned it back on herself in a hopeless bid at keeping it from hurting anyone else.

She thought of how tempting it was, even now, to do all those things all over again, to beat herself to a pulp and bleed herself dry, to do anything she could think of to keep from breaking down or falling apart, anything she could think of that would let her hold on to the illusion of strength that Jadzia needed to see in her, the pedestal-high figure of success and recovery.

She thought of the knife, stared down at it with wide eyes and ran her tongue overcracked dry lips. She swallowed hard, tried to block out the memories of how its blade had kept her sane, how it had kept her alive when everything around her was twisted and broken and dying. She thought of Terok Nor, of what it had done to her, what it had made her, and she vowed never to let Jadzia fall that far.

After a very long moment, when she was sure she could do it without wavering, she raised her eyes and let them lock onto the fear in Jadzia’s. She let herself focus, really focus on that face that was so like her own, the desperation in her ice-blue eyes, the hopeful hopelessness, the tremors in her hands as she tried to hold the knife flat and steady, forcing down the need to use it. Which one of them she wanted to cut open, Dax wasn’t entirely sure, though she supposed it didn’t matter. She was trying so hard, fighting with everything she had to keep from doing it, and it broke Dax’s heart and lit her up at the same time.

With agonising gentleness, she prised the knife from Jadzia’s hand. She held it up to the light, studied their twin reflections, angular and distorted in the gleaming metal, so similar and yet so different. She held it there for just a moment, steadying herself, then slowly slid it back into its sheath.

“No,” she said, ever so softly. “I didn’t use it at all.”


	30. Chapter 30

“I don’t believe you.”

Dax tried to chuckle, but all that came out was a husky groan, a weak little sound that did nothing to deny the accusation. “I didn’t think you would,” she said tiredly.

Jadzia knitted her forehead, a frown lined with strain, like she was fighting to keep from assaulting her again. Dax touched her hip, fingertips pressing against the skin exposed just above the sheath of the knife. It didn’t seem to do much to calm her, but Dax drew her own kind of strength from the contact, reminding herself of the differences and similarities between them, of how precious this woman was, and how much good she might have in her if only they could fight down the darkness for long enough to let it shine.

“Don’t lie to me,” Jadzia said, sharp but worn down. “And don’t act like I’m going to fall apart and cry just because you say something that I might not want to hear. I can handle the truth just as well as you can. I’m not a little girl.”

The words cut Dax to the bone, far more effective than a thousand half-hearted blows even with a healthy wrist. Her head pulsed suddenly with unwanted memories, surfacing as they always did at exactly the wrong moment. The look on Curzon’s face when he told her she didn’t have what it took to be a host, when he said that she was finished. His face again, this time in her dreams, disappointed all over again with the way she’d failed to handle Joran. Curzon and the disappointment ringing hollow in those words. _Little girl_ , the burden she’d carried on her shoulders for more than three years. She tried to shove the doubts aside, to cast them out and focus on Jadzia instead, but the ache still remained even after so long, and it was hard to see past it.

“I know you’re not,” she said, and wished that she could convince herself quite that easily. “Don’t flatter yourself that I’m trying to protect you from anything. It’s not in either of our best interests to sugar-coat this.”

Jadzia snorted, still twitching with that characteristic aggression, the same anger but a little more controlled. “Maybe you should take your own advice and stop flattering yourself too,” she shot back moodily. “You’re a horrible liar.”

That was true, and Dax didn’t bother trying to defend herself. “Look,” she sighed, letting her thumb brush pointedly against the handle of the knife. “Does it matter what I did with that thing? Would it make any difference at all? I’m not here to teach you the best ways to injure yourself.” She glanced uncomfortably at Jadzia’s injured wrist. “I’d say you’ve got that particular subject pretty well covered all on your own.”

“You did this to me,” Jadzia reminded her. She was very pale as she raised her hand, flexing her fingers to test the pain; Dax longed to offer her another dose of painkillers, but there was nothing left in the hypospray. “That wasn’t my fault. It was yours, and you know it.”

“Maybe,” Dax shrugged, refusing to be baited or to shirk her own part in what had happened. “But you’re the one who thought it would be a good idea to punch me with that arm. You can’t blame me for that.”

Jadzia hung her head, accepting the responsibility for that just as readily as Dax accepted the responsibility for having caused the injury in the first place. She really was so much like her, so similar in so many ways, both good and bad. They were both so stubborn, and they could both be so arrogant when they believed in something, or even just when they wanted something. They were both Jadzia, but they were both Daxes as well, and there was as much of the old familiar Audrid in the eyes that stared back at her as there was in her own head, the same hints of Tobin and Lela in the way she smiled, and the same echoes of Torias and Emony in the cadence of her voice.

Maybe there was some Curzon in Jadzia too, but if there was it was well-hidden. The Jadzia Dax of this universe was harder than Dax herself was, and her aggression was much more unfocused than Curzon would ever have allowed in his successor. She still talked with her fists like he did, but with a keener edge; where Curzon threw his punches for the sheer joy of fighting, the excitement and the thrill of it, Jadzia threw hers with intent to kill, or at least to cause some serious damage. Dax wanted to blame that savagery on Joran, but she didn’t recognise much of him in it either; Joran was a man who took pride in his violence, but Jadzia just didn’t seem to know anything else.

Jadzia could benefit a lot from Curzon’s influence, Dax thought. There was none of his Klingon exuberance in her, none of his passion or lust for life, none of his glory or honour or vivacious pride. Dax rather suspected that a week or a month in the holosuite would have done very little to balm this Jadzia’s soul, no matter how desperately she needed it. It hadn’t been especially helpful to her, either, of course, but at least it had felt good while it was happening. Dax could still remember how to feel good, even in terrible moments, and she owed that to Curzon just as much as she owed her unfortunate appreciation for bloodwine. That sense of enjoyment, however fleeting, would do the hardened Jadzia of this universe a great deal of good; there was a roughness to her, a calloused callowness that really should have been sanded down years ago.

Where was the old man’s influence?, she wondered. What was Curzon Dax like in this universe?

“Arrogant,” Jadzia said, and Dax blinked as she realised that she’d asked the question out loud. “He was always right, even when he was wrong. He was an ass.”

Dax laughed in spite of herself. “He sounds just like my Curzon.”

She wondered, though, if it really was that simple. From what she’d gleaned from Kira and Bashir’s reports about this universe, the chances of Curzon Dax negotiating treaties with the Klingons were slim at best; necessity would dictate that he’d take a different career path, but she couldn’t help wondering just how different it was, and how differently it had shaped the rest of him. How completely had his love for the Klingon people defined the Curzon she knew? How tangibly had it forged his friendship with young Benjamin Sisko? How significant a part did it play in his influence on that shy little girl who inherited the symbiont?

Beside her, Jadzia sighed. She looked very tired. Dax touched her wrist, tracing the swelling under the splint, and wondered whether Curzon would have done the same.

“I’ve always been angry, you know,” Jadzia murmured, apropos of nothing. Dax frowned, confused by the uninvited observation, and so she elucidated. “I mean, even when I was just Jadzia. Even before I was joined. Even back when I was an initiate. I’ve always been that way. I was so determined, so focused, so desperate to prove myself.” She tried to laugh, but no sound came out. “Everything was a challenge or a test. I felt like everyone out there was just trying to tear me down, like the whole universe was just sitting around and waiting for me to screw up, and I was too proud to prove them right.”

Dax laughed on her behalf; the sound came much more easily for her than it seemed to for Jadzia. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“I’m sure you do,” Jadzia said. “But I wasn’t… I wasn’t very good. You know? I was smart, but I wasn’t brilliant. I could never have been a scientist. I could never have been anything like you.”

“You underestimate yourself,” Dax told you. “You know as well as I do that symbionts only go to the best.”

“Maybe where you come from,” Jadzia sighed. “But I think they only gave me mine because I was too damn stubborn to let them beat me.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even really care about the symbiont, to be honest. I just… I just thought being joined was my only way out. I thought it was my only chance to make something of myself. I wanted to be someone. I wanted to be worth something. And I wouldn’t let anyone get in the way of that.”

Dax smiled; her jaw ached. “I felt like that too,” she said. “I wanted so badly to be joined.”

She didn’t mention the part where she was never angry. She’d been ambitious, yes, and determined, but she hadn’t been aggressive about it. She’d been highly intelligent, but quiet and studious. She’d been a shy young wallflower, barely able to string a sentence together if she thought someone was looking at her. Just like Jadzia, she had seen everything as a test too, but instead of attacking them head-on like her counterpart seemed to, she’d just bowed her head and apologised. If the two of them had met as young women before their respective joining, she suspected that Jadzia would have eaten her alive.

“I thought it would be the answer to everything,” Jadzia murmured, losing herself a little to the ghosts in her head. “I thought the universe would suddenly open up in front of me. I thought everything would become perfect, like seven lifetimes’ worth of wisdom would somehow make right every wrong that wretched place had ever done to me.” She shook her head at that, laughing loudly and bitterly, and Dax fought the urge to pull her in, hold her close, and never let her go. “But it wasn’t like that.”

 _It was for me,_ Dax thought, but couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.

Jadzia stared at her for a long moment, as though she could hear it anyway. “To tell you the truth,” she went on, looking deeply ashamed, “sometimes I think being joined made everything worse.”

The words kicked Dax between the ribs, knocking the air out of her lungs. She’d never felt that way; she couldn’t even imagine feeling that way. Even in her worst moments with Joran, she had never regretted anything about being joined. The only time she’d ever questioned her choices was as an initiate, crying herself to sleep every night because of the hell that Curzon Dax had put her through. But even that had paled to nothing when she reapplied and was accepted. And Joran… she’d chosen him, hadn’t she? _Live or die_ ; that was the choice they’d given her, and she had chosen to live because she had so much to live for, because the symbiont had given her so much to live for. It was hard, yes, and it hurt like hell, and sometimes it scared her so much that she couldn’t even breathe, but even that wasn’t enough to make her regret it. How could she, when the symbiont had given her so much?

“I can’t imagine that,” she murmured aloud, because she thought it might help Jadzia to hear it said. “I can’t imagine not wanting the symbiont. I can’t imagine wishing I’d never got it. It’s such an important part of me. It’s made me so much more than I could ever be on my own. I…”

She exhaled, trailing off, feeling the waters getting murky. This was a part of herself that she had always struggled with, even before she’d been chosen for joining. Admittedly, getting the Dax symbiont had only made it worse where she’d expected it would make it better, but it had been a problem long before the symbiont had taken up residence inside her.

The time she’d spent as an initiate still haunted her, even now. She had been washed out of the program, and even now she didn’t really know why she’d been allowed back in, why the Symbiosis Commission had made an exception for the first time in Trill history, why Curzon Dax had stood aside and allowed it to happen when he’d been so adamant about getting her kicked out in the first place. It still disturbed her to think of it, and all the more so when she allowed herself to dwell on all the things the symbiont had done for her, the countless ways it had enriched her existence. In the back of her mind, she still wondered, still questioned, still doubted herself. She couldn’t help it.

Did she really deserve the priceless gift she’d been given in Dax? Had she deserved to be let back into the program? Was she really worthy of adding her name to the symbiont’s already vast legacy? Most days, she tried to tell herself that she was, hoping that if she said it often enough she might start to believe it, but sometimes, she couldn’t help thinking that she was deluded. Curzon had been right to wash her out, she thought in those dark and doubt-filled moments. He was right the first time, and she was an idiot for challenging him. How could she, a shy little girl who didn’t know the first thing about life, know more about her suitability than Curzon Dax, who had lived for so long and seen so much?

“I guess that’s where we’re different,” Jadzia muttered, interrupting her reverie. “All the symbiont ever did for me was make me feel things I never wanted.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“Yes, it is.” She looked down, biting her lip. “Do you really think I wanted to be exiled from Trill? The place is a hellhole, sure, but _exile_? I never asked for that. I never wanted it. But the damn symbiont had other ideas, didn’t it? The damn symbiont fell in love, and that meant I had to fall in love too, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.” She lowered her hands, the pain in her wrist seemingly forgotten as she hunched forward to cradle her belly. “Do you have any idea what that feels like? To fall so deeply in love with someone that you would do anything for them… that you’d even choose exile, that you’d throw away everything that ever meant anything to you, and not regret it for a second…” She trailed off for a moment, choked up. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to do all that, to _feel_ all that, and never know if it’s really you or just that thing inside of you?”

Suddenly, Dax understood why Jadzia was so afraid of letting herself feel. “No,” she admitted out loud, barely above a whisper. “I don’t.”

“Well, I do.” Jadzia wrung her hands, sucking in a sharp breath as her wrist twitched. “And you know the worst part? The really stupid part?” She rocked back and forth, right on the edge of madness. “I’d do it again. I would do it again, and again, and again. If I had to do it a hundred times, or a thousand, I’d still choose exile every single time. Because the damned symbiont won’t ever let me forget how much I love her.”

She sobbed, just once, and Dax bit her tongue to keep from crying as well. “Jadzia…”

“I wish I was.” She spat the words, and it took Dax a moment to figure out that she was talking about the name. “I was better off when that’s all I was. Just Jadzia. Just a stupid little girl who didn’t know any better. I was better off when I was her, when I didn’t have Torias’s feelings or Audrid’s arrogance or Lela’s compassion, or…”

“I know,” Dax murmured, though she couldn’t keep from frowning; she wouldn’t connect any of those hosts with those particular traits, and it struck her again just how different this universe was. “I know it’s hard.”

“It’s more than just hard. ‘Hard’ is easy. ‘Hard’ is staying below the radar of another Alliance patrol when all you want is some clean water. ‘Hard’ is making love to a man who only gets that way when you talk about his precious rebellion. Believe me, I know ‘hard’, and that’s not this.” She pressed her arms down across her stomach, squeezing the symbiont within, and Dax winced in sympathy for the poor creature. “This isn’t hard. This is hell.”

“No,” Dax said, voice as rough and cold as the stone walls that surrounded them. She took Jadzia by the shoulders, gripping tight, and allowed herself to vent just a little of her own pain-touched anger. “Terok Nor is hell. What you’re going through is… well, I don’t know what it is, really. But I do know it’s not that.”

Jadzia softened, though not without a considerable effort. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s all just words. What matters is that I was better off when I was just Jadzia. I was better off when I was just an angry and stubborn little girl who thought the universe owed her something. I miss that Jadzia, and I’d give anything to get her back.”

Dax swallowed hard. Since arriving in this universe, she had seen and heard and experienced a great many things that hat brought her to tears, and a great many more that had brought her close to them. She had learned so much about the people here, about their struggles and their lives, and she ached for them. Again and again, she ached and she cried and she felt her heart break. But none of that had cut as deep as this moment; none of it had stung as fiercely as the sight and the sound and the reality of Jadzia Dax hating her symbiont.

Being joined was a blessing, the most precious gift a Trill could ever hope for. That was why so many young men and women put themselves through the tortures and torments of the initiate program, why they would suffer and strain and labour just for the slimmest chance of being chosen. As much as it frightened her sometimes, and as often as it laid her low with self-loathing and inferiority, Dax couldn’t think of anything more beautiful than the thought of adding her own name to a centuries-old existence, adding a new layer to a creature who had seen so many already, of being a part of something that was so much more than a single soul could hope to imagine. It was the most amazing thing in the world; it was the most amazing thing in all the worlds eight lifetimes had ever seen.

It broke her heart that Jadzia didn’t feel the same way. It broke her heart to think that any Trill might regret being joined, but to see that regret in her own eyes, to trace the scars of it etched under her own skin, to see and know that somewhere out there was a version of herself who should never have been joined, who didn’t want to be joined… that was almost more than she could endure. All her fears came rushing to the surface, all her memories of the initiate program, of Curzon washing her out, all those soul-deep anxieties that maybe he shouldn’t have let her back in after all. Here she was, looking down at a Jadzia Dax who stood as proof positive of all those things she’d tried so hard not to believe, a Dax who didn’t want to be Dax, a Jadzia who didn’t want to be joined…

She shook her head, forcing herself to remember the wider issues at stake here, forcing herself to think of Jadzia and not herself. How could Jadzia ever expect to understand Joran when she refused to understand herself? How could she hope to break past barriers that didn’t want to be broken? How could she try to connect and communicate with the sociopath inside her when she couldn’t even bear the legislator or the athlete or the pilot? What chance did she have against Joran when she couldn't even deal with her symbiont on a good day? And what chance did Dax have of helping her to deal with any of that when she couldn’t understand how it felt to not want it?

“Jadzia…” she said softly, but it hurt to much even to try and say what she wanted to. It hurt even just to think of it. “Jadzia, I… you…”

“I know,” Jadzia said, in less than a whisper. Her eyes were downcast, fixed on the rhythm of her breathing, the in-and-out motion as her stomach swelled and contracted. Dax wondered if she was thinking of the little creature inside, the pain it had put her through and the pain she had put it through in return. “You don’t have to say it. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Maybe you do,” Dax said. “But whether I need to say it or not, you need to hear it.” She turned her face away, hiding from the sight of a Jadzia Dax huddled over her belly with her arms wrapped around a symbiont she no longer wanted. “Like it or not, Jadzia, Dax is part of you.”

“I know that,” Jadzia snapped. “I know it, and I live with it every day. Don’t you think I hate that? Don’t you think I hate that I have this thing in me and I don’t want it? Don’t you think it kills me that all I want is to rip it out of me when there are thousands of people back on Trill who would do anything to have it inside them?”

Dax touched her arm, silencing her. “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I’m not here to preach Trill ethics at you. I’m here to help you deal with what’s going on inside your head, and that’s what I’m talking about.” She shut her eyes for a beat or two, felt her shoulders relax as she looked back to see that Jadzia looking up at her. “When I say Dax is a part of you, I mean that you can’t ignore it. Any of it.”

“I know that,” Jadzia said, though the shadows behind her eyes told a different story.

“I don’t think you do.” Dax sighed at the hollowness in her, and willed herself to try again. “Look,” she pressed, quietly but with poignancy. “I know you don’t want to hear it. I know you don’t want to think about it. I know you don’t want anything to do with it, but I’m afraid that’s not an option any more. You don’t have the luxury now of wishing that you didn’t have the symbiont, not while you’re struggling with this. You’re never going to be able to control Joran if you won’t even accept that he’s a part of you. And you’re never going to be able to accept him if you won’t accept the rest of them.” Jadzia tried to argue, but Dax silenced her with a pointed look. “You can’t ignore any them any more. Not Curzon, not Torias, not even—”

Jadzia cut her off with a bitter laugh. “I already tried ignoring Torias,” she reminded her, angry but at least vaguely controlled. “I tried so damn hard to ignore him, and what good did it do me? None.” She shook her head, torn between malice and mourning. “It didn’t stop me falling in love, it didn’t stop me choosing exile, and it didn’t stop me losing her all over again.”

“And you hate him for that,” Dax pressed, a little urgently. “Don’t you? You hate that Torias inspired you to fall in love with his wife. You hate that he inspired you to give up your life for her. You hate that he shared the pain you felt when she died. You hate that he’s the reason you lost her not just once but twice. You hate him for every choice you made, don’t you?”

“Yes.” The confession was a breath, a hiss of steam from an overheating kettle. “I do hate him.” Her voice was shaking with violence, but Dax could tell that it belonged to Jadzia and Jadzia alone. There was no hint of Joran Belar in her this time, no psychopathic serial killer or sadomasochist, just an angry young woman who resented her choices. “I hate Torias, I hate Curzon, I hate them all.” Her breath hitched. “I hate _Dax_.”

Dax sighed, feeling the insult sting like a slap. “And that’s why I can’t help you.”

It was true. As desperately as she wished it wasn’t, she couldn’t hide from it, and neither could Jadzia. How could she help her come to terms with Joran when she hadn’t even come to terms with the parts of herself that were simple and straightforward? How could she help her to drive out his darkness when she couldn’t even accept Audrid’s sweetness or Torias’s love? This woman, this shattered-glass reflection of herself, this tortured Jadzia who didn’t want Dax… she was nothing like her at all.

Dax had been many people. She had seen countless reflections in countless mirrors, and even on her most mixed-up and confused days, she would always recognise herself. Sometimes she was a little surprised by which version of herself was staring back, but if she blinked a couple of times and squinted, she would see her own soul even if the face belonged to a stranger. She could recognise herself in any face, but the woman staring back at her now from behind her own eyes was someone she did not know. She had seen Jadzia’s face a thousand times, but she did not recognise her at all.

Jadzia was lost. Completely and fundamentally, and there was nothing Dax could do to help her find herself. It didn’t matter if Joran devoured her completely, she realised, because even if he didn’t one of the others would step in and do it for him. She was at war with herself, fighting Daxes on all fronts, and for the first time Dax thought that maybe Jadzia was right to be more afraid of the hallucinations than anything else. They were the only thing distinguishing him from all the others, after all. Joran might be her most pressing issue right at the moment, but Dax was slowly coming to realise that for this Jadzia he wasn’t the only one… and the more she looked at her, the more she realised that he might not even be the most important one.

It spoke volumes that Jadzia didn’t even try to argue with her. She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t complain either, and she didn’t accuse Dax of giving up on her this time. Maybe she’d realised it a while ago, or maybe she really was just figuring it now; Dax couldn’t tell for sure, but the resignation in the slump of her shoulders, the way she folded in on herself, the weight bearing visibly down on her spoke volumes even when she didn’t say a word.

This was about so much more than Joran. A few hallucinations were dangerous, yes, but there was a deeper underlying issue that couldn’t be fixed with a hypospray, and they both knew that. The anger in her head might be eased with a few well-timed doses of benzocyatizine, but the anger in her heart was too deeply rooted for Dax to ever hope to reconcile it.

“You can’t just ignore the things you don’t like,” Dax said.

“I know I can’t,” Jadzia said again, voice light even as her body bent double. “I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”

Dax had to smile at that, though it was bittersweet. “It doesn’t work,” she echoed, enunciating carefully to drive the point home. “You can’t just shut off the parts of yourself that don’t do what you want them to. You can’t keep the symbiont’s past hosts from exerting themselves, no matter how badly you wish they’d just shut up.” She thought of Curzon, of badly-timed bloodwine slept off in the Intendant’s bed, of the hangover that had followed and chased her down to Ore Processing, and for a moment she felt dangerously queasy. “You can’t stop them from telling you what they think or how they feel or what they want. They’re going to do that whether you like it or not, for good or for bad. That’s why it’s called ‘symbiosis’.”

“I know that,” Jadzia said.

“I’m sure you do,” Dax agreed readily. “You were an initiate just like me. They must have taught you. But knowing it isn’t the same as truly understanding it. Those people — and make no mistake, Jadzia, they are people — are a part of you now. They’re not just voices in your head, or experiences that you didn’t have to waste time living through, or memories that make good anecdotes at parties. They’re _you_. They define you, just as much as Jadzia does. And you can say _‘I don’t want them’_ all you like, but you can’t get rid of them any more than you can sever your own senses.”

Jadzia glanced down at her knife, sheathed safely at her hip. “I wish I could,” she said.

“I know you do,” Dax whispered, useless and worthless. “And I wish I could help, but I can’t. It’s on you. The only one who can make peace with who you are is you.”

She could feel the resistance in Jadzia, the refusal to acknowledge what she was hearing even as she must have already accepted the truth of it. Though her eyes still held a stranger, Dax recognised the trademark Dax stubbornness all too well, and it gave her hope. If they could be alike in something as simple as this, she thought, then maybe they could become alike in other ways too. With a little time and a lot of hard work, maybe Jadzia really could become like her. Maybe she could learn to appreciate the symbiont as she did. If she set her mind to it, if she applied herself and really fought for it, maybe she could save herself.

Maybe she could. And maybe she would. But if she did, it would not be with Dax’s help.

That was the heart of it, and that was the part that hurt. It made her want to lunge across the space between them, to draw the knife from its sheath and slide it through her palm one last time, to mark herself again with the stain of this place and this time make sure it stayed. After everything that had happened here, everything Dax had been through, everything she’d done, it ultimately came down to those three agonising words: she couldn’t help. She had crossed universes, slept with sadists, watched helplessly as innocents were tortured and slaughtered, and all for the shattered-glass reflection of a Jadzia who was nothing like her. She had done terrible things, become terrible things, and all for nothing. What Jadzia needed, she could only get from her own Dax, and there was nothing this one could do for either of them.

It hurt. It hurt worse than any blade, any blood, anything. It _hurt_ , and when she finally went back to where she came from, the scars she bore from this terrible place would all be shaped like Dax.

Jadzia didn’t put up a fight. There was a kind of despair in her eyes when she finally looked up to meet Dax’s, that same hopeless hopefulness that she’d seen before, the resignation of someone who knew what was coming and the cock-eyed optimism of someone who still believed it could be stopped. She was giving herself over completely, Dax realised with a sour taste in her mouth. For good or for bad, she was setting her fate in Dax’s hands, and trusting that she would treat it with kindness.

“So,” she said in a tremulous murmur. “What now?”

Dax shrugged. “You tell me,” she said, with genuine remorse. “I’ve given you everything I can. What more could you possibly want from me? I’ve told you as much as I know about Joran, about what you’re going through with him and what I went— what I’m still going through with him. I put my neck on the line to get you as much benzocyatizine as I could smuggle from the Intendant, and I talked you through what to expect from yourself. I helped you to understand what to expect from this new personality inside of you, and I helped to try and get your isoboramine levels stabilised too. But I can’t help you find peace inside yourself if you don’t want it. I can’t wave a hand and erase all the bitterness you feel. That’s down to you, and your symbiont.”

Uninvited and without asking for permission, she touched a hand to Jadzia’s stomach, imagining that she felt the symbiont resting within. Jadzia flinched, then uncurled her body, wordlessly granting access, and Dax let her palm lie flat against the surface, feeling the muscle flex and tighten. Jadzia’s expression was strange, discomfort mixed with contentment, as though one part of her wanted to recoil from the contact even as another part wanted to lean into it. Which part was which?, Dax wondered. Was it the host or the symbiont that made her turn away even as those taut muscles gradually relaxed?

After a long and deeply intimate moment, Jadzia settled back on her haunches. Dax kept her hand on her abdomen, feeling the gentle rhythm of her breathing as it swelled and contracted through her muscles, and Jadzia turned her attention back to her injured wrist. Dax could almost see the pain throbbing through her, waves of it coming and going, colouring her face with exertion as she rode it out and dissolving a moment later to leave her pale and shaky. Dax wished she could ease the pain, just as she wished she could soothe the tumult in her head, but she was helpless to stand against either.

She wished she could do more on every level for this poor wretched Jadzia, but it was out of her hands. Those injures, the ones in her head and on her body, were all as self-inflicted as each other, and there was nothing Dax could do for any of them but apologise for the part she’d played in making it worse. She could apologise for the damage to Jadzia’s wrist, if not the way she’d abused it afterwards, just as she could apologise for the parts of Joran she’d unwittingly brought out in her, but she could not erase either of those things, and she could not make the burden of them any lighter for Jadzia to bear.

At long last, Jadzia looked up, face sweaty and strain-lined, and heaved a deep sigh. Dax could tell by her tone that there would be another accusation, that she was still too hurt and too afraid to accept the truth, that she would do everything in her power to deny this before the reality sank in and dragged her down into its depths. Well, Dax thought, if that was what she wanted, let her. Let her point her fingers if it would make things easier. Let her scream and shout, kick and struggle. Let her do whatever it took. They were both reduced to this, both castrated and neutered, unable to do anything for each other, and if the last gift Dax could offer was herself as a scapegoat, then so be it.

“So,” Jadzia said at last. “What you’re really saying is that I brought this on myself? I made my bed, so now I have to lie in it, and there’s nothing you can do but stand back and watch me fail?”

Dax forced a patient smile, jaw aching. “I’m not saying that at all,” she said. “I’m saying that you can’t sit around waiting for someone else to fix you. It’s not going to happen. If you have unresolved issues with your symbiont, then you have to deal with them yourself. There’s nothing I can do or say that will help you. And it’s not because you brought it on yourself or because I think you deserve it. You don’t. No-one does, and for what it’s worth I’d give my arm to help you through it. I’d give anything I had if I thought it would make a difference, but it won’t. And ultimately, it doesn’t matter what I think or what I want, or even what I do. I could stay here for the rest of my life and it wouldn’t help. I could throw away everything I’ve built for myself in my universe, give up everything I have and everything I am just to help you deal with yourself, and it still wouldn’t be enough. Right now, Jadzia, you need to step up and help yourself.”

She didn’t need to look at Jadzia to know that she knew that, but she locked eyes with her anyway, because she wanted to see it, to take comfort in the sight of that understanding, even if it never reached further than her eyes. They both knew that this was a pointless argument, that they could fight the truth until they were both old and grey and exhausted, until the Dax symbiont passed out of them both and into someone young and eager and excited, but all the fighting in two universes would still amount to nothing. The facts were there, and they would not change.

Still, when the admission finally came, it came hard to both of them. “You’re right,” Jadzia murmured at last, sounding utterly devastated. “I know you are. It’s just…”

“I know,” Dax said, trying to make this at least a little easier. “I know it’s frightening. I know it’s hard. And I know it’s a thousand times worse when you don’t have anyone you feel you can depend on.”

Jadzia sighed. “It’s lonely,” she admitted, sounding hateful.

Dax nodded. She thought of Sisko, the unstable and dangerous Captain Sisko of this universe, the man who shared Jadzia’s bed but cast off his responsibilities to her as though they meant less than nothing. She thought of the way he had cornered her to make sure she was taking good care of his woman, the way he’d threatened her if she didn’t. He was overprotective, almost dangerously so, but at least in his own way his intentions were good. As bad as he was at showing it, he cared. Probably more than he would ever admit, but he did. Jadzia would need friends like him.

“I know it is,” she said again. “But you shouldn’t be so hard on the people you do have. Benjamin… your Benjamin cares a great deal about you. I wouldn’t be so quick to cast him aside just because he’s an idiot.”

“I don’t need him,” Jadzia said, quick and sharp, just like Dax herself would have been had someone been stupid enough to imply that she needed their help. “I don’t need any of those damn Terrans. And even if I did, don’t you think they’ve got enough to worry about, without me adding to their problems?” Dax could hear the edge in her voice, and recognised the desperation; the sentiment, if not the words themselves, was clearly Benjamin’s, and it was clear that Jadzia only believed it because she’d heard it so many times. “I don’t need any of them. All I needed was you. And now you’re leaving.”

Dax could feel herself being baited, but the finger pointing at her was her own, and she was as defenceless against Jadzia as Jadzia was against her. “It’s not like that.”

Of course Jadzia knew that too, but admitting it would mean admitting that her anger was misplaced; it would mean admitting that this really was all on her, that she really did need to pull herself out of this alone, and she couldn’t bear to do that. Dax understood how intimidating it was, how scared she must be, and she certainly empathised with Jadzia’s reticence, but for all that she understood and desperately wanted to make it easier in whatever way she could, a part of her was crying out and wounded, so tired and aching to be set free.

Jadzia wasn’t the only one suffering. Dax had been through more than her share of trauma since she’d arrived in this universe, and it was only by keeping her focus on Jadzia and her troubles that she’d managed to keep from drowning in them. She was here for Jadzia, she told herself over and over again; she would have time enough to break under her own struggles when she was safely back home, wrapped up tight in the safety net of her friends, of Benjamin and Nerys and Julian. She was here for Jadzia, and that thought was the only thing that had kept her from collapsing every time she thought of Keiko, or from shuddering when she remembered the Intendant’s touch. This place had done unspeakable things to her, and she had done unspeakable things to it. In truth, she was almost as scared of having to think about them again as Jadzia was of having to depend upon herself.

“We’ve both got battles to fight,” she heard herself murmur, and her voice was so distant that for a long moment she didn’t know which one of them had spoken. “But I can’t just hold your hand and hope for the best. I can’t keep talking you through this when you don’t want to hear what I have to say. And I can’t…” She closed her eyes, braced herself, then opened them again. “I can’t keep clinging to your pain when I need to deal with my own. Jadzia…” Her voice broke; in the time that she had been here, she’d come to hate that name, the name that used to be hers. “Jadzia, I can’t help you any more than I already have.”

Jadzia swallowed. She pressed her good hand to her abdomen once more, breathing deep and slow, and Dax again imagined that she was trying to communicate with the symbiont inside her, trying to fix what was broken between them by the power of her thoughts. She could have told her that it wouldn’t work that way, but what was the point? Let Jadzia do what she wanted, let her try in her own way to mend the gashes inside herself. Dax couldn’t help her, and it would do them both some good for Jadzia to try, and even to fail, on her own.

“I know,” Jadzia said at last, sounding hazy and distant. “I know all of that. I’ve seen how you’ve been since you got back from Terok Nor. I’ve seen the way you flinch when I try to touch you, the way you disappear inside yourself or start shivering for no reason. I…” She shook her head, and Dax hated how transparent she had become. “I’ve heard the things you scream in your sleep.”

Dax swallowed. “I…”

Jadzia’s eyelashes fluttered, moisture clinging to them. “I know how much this universe has hurt you,” she said softly. “And I don’t blame you for wanting to get out of here.”

Dax didn’t bother trying to deny it. “It’s not about you,” she said again, after a beat. “But even if I wanted to stay here, I still couldn’t help you any more. You have to understand that. I can’t do anything more for you. Even if I—”

“But you don’t.” Jadzia pulled her hand away from her abdomen, letting her fingertips slide up until they pressed against the splint on her wrist. “You don’t want to stay. So it doesn’t matter what might happen if you did. It doesn’t matter, because you don’t.” It wasn’t quite an accusation this time, but it was still close. “Whether you could help or not, you’re still leaving. And you still want to.”

“I _have_ to,” Dax corrected, feeling her voice crack, splitting at the seams, quivering along with her insides. “I can’t help you. I can’t stay here. I can’t… I can’t… I…”

“Don’t confuse the two,” Jadzia said, voice unexpectedly sharp. “If you’re going to say it, say it like it really is.” Her eyes darkened, and for a moment Dax thought she might reach for her, in a slap or an embrace or some strange combination of the two, but she just sighed and spread her arms. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you really can’t help me. I don’t know. But even if that’s true, we both know it’s not the reason why you’re leaving.” She raised her head. “You’re scared of what this universe will do to you.”

“No,” Dax told her. “I’m scared of what it’s already done to me.”

That was true, and that was the part that hurt. Jadzia was right; she was reeling from this place, not just what she’d seen and been through, but from everything it was. It had brought out the worst parts of her, made her face terrible things in herself and see worse things in other people. Would she ever be able to see her friend Benjamin in the same light? The simple tailor Garak? Miles and Keiko O’Brien? Would she ever be able to look Nerys in the eye again? It was the job of a joined Trill to know when to put things behind her, to accept what had happened and move on, touched only by memory, but Dax wasn’t so sure if she could do that here. It was all too much, too raw, and too real.

Sisko had been right when he’d pointed out that she was hanging on by a thread. That thread was frayed and tattered, barely enough to keep her together at all, and she knew that she had to leave before it unravalled completely. She was falling to pieces, and she had to get out of here before that happened, before she was left suspended, trapped in this universe that had fed her with so much pain and rage and fear.

To her surprise, the confession seemed to have softened Jadzia’s features a little; even her storm-darkened eyes had turned pale and frost-coloured as she stared at her. “I’m sorry,” she said, and Dax could feel the sincerity in her. “I’m sorry that I’m the reason it did that. I’m sorry you had to come here for me, and I’m sorry you had to hurt for me.”

She knew. It worked both ways, Dax realised; just as she knew Jadzia, Jadzia knew her too. Far more than that, though, she knew this place. She knew first-hand the effect that this universe had on idealistic young people, on idealistic young Jadzias. She knew how completely it ripped the soul away, turned the heart and the mind inside-out and carved the body with shallow cuts and bone-deep bruises. She knew everything, because she had lived it all. This place was all she knew, and Dax could see in her eyes that she wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

“I’ve given you everything,” Dax whispered, hating the taste of malice on her tongue, hating what this place had done to her, the dark thing it had turned her into. The compassion she had come into this world with was gone now, dissipated and dissolved, and all she wanted was to leave it behind; to hell with Jadzia and her demons, to hell with this world, this universe, to hell with everything. “I went to Terok Nor for you. I slept with the Intendant for you. I gave you more benzocyatizine than anyone could ever need. I gave you my memories.” She took a deep breath, steadying her voice and her body. “I gave you everything I had. I gave you everything. What else could I have that would be any good to you now? What else could you possibly want?”

Jadzia looked at her, eyes wide and wet and brimming with emotion. “You,” she said, and Dax’s heart stopped. “Just you.”

Jaw aching, Dax turned away. “You can’t have me,” she said. “There’s nothing left of me for you to have. Your…” She swallowed. “Your precious Intendant took it all.”

Admitting it made her feel sick, twisted and dirty. All of a sudden, she wanted nothing more than to get up, to run away from this place, to hide out there in the middle of nowhere. She wanted to cover herself, her face and her body, every inch of her, to shield herself from Jadzia’s judgement… or, so much worse, from her sympathy. She wanted so desperately to hide, to protect herself, to cower from the things she’d done, the things she’d had to do and the things she’d let herself do. She felt so sick, so terribly sick, in every sense of the word: nauseous, yes, but more than that, she felt twisted. She was perverted and wrong, and she couldn’t make sense any more of how she’d become this way. Was it Joran? The Intendant? Or had she always been this sick, but never realised it until this universe gave her no choice? She couldn’t remember any more.

For a very long moment, she felt like she was going to pass out. The weight of it all was so heavy, so overpowering that it almost drove her to unconsciousness, and in the heartbeat before she remembered what that meant, she almost welcomed it. It was only when she remembered what would happen if she did that she was able to push past it, to keep breathing and keep conscious. Keiko’s half-dead face was waiting in the void, her empty eyes and her disembodied voice. Dax couldn’t face that, couldn’t face another of those dreams, those dark dreams that were all her own, horrors that made Joran’s phantasmal violence feel almost like nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Jadzia murmured again, and Dax recoiled. How could she know so much, so intimately, and still not realise how terrible sympathy was right now?

“Don’t be sorry,” she blurted out, the words coming out rougher and harder than than she’d intended them to. “Don’t be anything. Just…” She forced herself to look at her, to find the inner strength to look herself in the eye as she surrendered. “Just let me go home.”

It felt like giving up. On Jadzia, on herself, on the strength and the courage she should have had. It felt like she was turning her back on Jadzia, cowering in fear of herself, like she was tucking her tail between her legs and running away. She wouldn’t blame Jadzia for being angry with her, and there was still a small part of her that couldn’t help wishing it would end in violence again. She almost smiled at the thought, the comforting idea of Jadzia rearing back and coming at her again, fists raised and pain howling in her throat. It would make this so much easier, wouldn’t it?

Maybe she was more attuned with Joran than she’d thought she was, she mused, because in that moment she couldn’t think of anything in any universe that she wanted more than to be bruised and bloodied and broken.

Instead, she felt the gentle press of a hand on her shoulder, weak fingers squeezing lightly. Where was the anger they’d fought off just a few minutes before? Where was the blind rage, the seething hatred and the assault? Where were the clenched fists and aborted cries of pain? Where was the violence now that Dax was the one who needed it? She couldn’t see it. When she looked into Jadzia’s eyes, when she felt those strong fingers grip her shoulder, when she looked and saw and felt her all around her, there was no trace of Joran, no trace of the irrational young woman who wanted to rip the symbiont out of herself. There was nothing at all, just peace and understanding and love.

What could she do with that?, Dax thought bitterly. What good was love to either of them now? Hadn’t it caused enough problems for them both?

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Jadzia was the calm one now, that she was the one holding Dax steady, that she was the one with clear eyes and steady hands. Wasn’t she the one who had needed help in the first place? Wasn’t she the one who was so afraid of the cataclysms inside her head, the brutality coursing hotter than blood in her veins? Where was all this sudden inner peace coming from? Where was the blame, the accusation, the betrayal? Was Dax really so pitiful, so pathetic that even this angry and shattered reflection of Jadzia couldn’t bear the thought of trying to hurt her? What had this place done to make her the one in need? It was all wrong. It was backwards, and it was so terribly wrong.

“Jadzia.”

She bit her lip, wishing she could draw blood and draw comfort from the sweet metallic sting, but she didn’t have the strength. “Don’t call me that.”

She hated how deeply the sound of her own name affected her now, hated that she couldn’t separate herself from the woman in front of her, couldn’t distinguish the sound of her own voice from the Intendant’s. She remembered it too clearly, memory like iron stoked hot and deadly, a brand to claim her, _‘Jadzia’_ whispered and moaned like a promise or a threat, and sometimes both at the same time.

Jadzia, the other one, was looking at her, frowning. “You keep saying that.”

“Because I mean it.” Her voice shook, and so did her hands. “You’re Jadzia. That’s you, not me. You’re the one she…” She cut herself off, unable to say the words, unable to even think the name. “This is your world, and that’s your name. I’m just Dax. I’m just…”

Jadzia shrugged, apparently not seeing the difference. Dax wondered how she felt when it was her, how the name resonated inside her when the Intendant called her that. Was it any different to the way that Benjamin said it? Or Torias’s twice-lost lover? _‘My sweet Jadzia’_ , the Intendant had called her. How did that make her feel?

“Dax, then.” Her voice was careless, but her fingers tightened just a little on Dax’s shoulder. “I know I probably seem ungrateful to you. I know you’re probably waiting for me to thank you, to praise you, to… to put you up on that pedestal you say you don’t want. I know you want some kind of acknowledgement for everything you’ve done.”

“I don’t,” Dax told her, but she was still locked in the sound of her name, that name, Jadzia trembling on beautiful Bajoran lips. “I don’t want that at all.”

Jadzia frowned. “Well, whether you want it or not, it’s there,” she said. “I am grateful. I am. I know what you’ve done, what you put yourself through, and I know it was all for me. I know you. I know you, just like you know me. We know each other, and that’s… it’s a wonderful thing, but it hurts. It hurts because I know. I know how awful you’re feeling. I know why you want to go. I know why you need to. And I know… I know there really isn’t anything you can do for me now. I know it’s all on me. I really do know that. So it’s not ingratitude, I swear it’s not. It’s just…”

“Don’t,” Dax said. She felt distant again, hazy and a little lost.

“I have to.” Jadzia bit her lip. “Because you’re here. You’re here, and you know me, and you are me, and it hurts. I know, but it hurts. Having you, and then losing you…”

“Don’t,” Dax said again. “Please.”

So Jadzia didn’t. She just leaned in, body tight and taught and trembling. Dax could feel the pain in her, the exhaustion and the sorrow and probably a lingering revenant of the rage she’d indulged to its breaking point. She could feel everything that Jadzia was feeling, and for the first time since she’d come to this awful place, she wished she that couldn’t. She wished she didn’t understand the selfishness, the demands and the pleas, the outbursts, the irrationality, the violence and the hate, the betrayal and the grief, all those things that had spilled out between them. She wished… she wished she didn’t understand anything, because it was too painful to understand everything.

She understood why Jadzia wanted her to stay. She understood why she was so afraid of facing her demons all on her own. She understood the lack of faith in herself, the fear of not being good enough, of not being brave enough or strong enough. She felt the same way herself, terror surging up every time she looked into the mirror, every time she took her clothes off and let her gaze drop to the swell of her belly, the thin white line where the symbiont went in, a curved scar to remind her of the responsibility she’d taken upon herself. She knew exactly how Jadzia felt, how frightened, how lost, how lonely.

She didn’t understand loss like Jadzia did. She couldn’t know how it felt to be abandoned, to lose her home and her lover and everything she’d ever cared about in a single terrible tragedy. She couldn’t understand the pain of being left alone again, of having to fight terrible things inside herself without so much as a shoulder to lean on. Dax hoped that she would never have to understand that kind of loss, that kind of isolation. She hoped that at least that would be one thing Jadzia would face alone. But she understood the rest. Fear, and most of all the fear of having to depend on herself, having to trust in the only person in any universe she did not trust at all. Oh, she certainly knew that.

“You’re me,” she murmured, meeting Jadzia halfway as she leaned further in. “You are me. And if I’m going to be okay, that means you’ll be okay too.”

“But what if you’re not?” Jadzia asked. “What if you’re not okay?”

“I will be,” Dax insisted. “We both will be.”

“How do you know?”

“I know,” Dax said, because Jadzia needed to hear it, because Jadzia needed to believe it, because though she would never admit it, Jadzia needed this one last thing from her. “I just know.”

Jadzia sighed, breath warm against Dax’s mouth. “I wish I had your faith,” she murmured, and Dax felt her heart break as she leaned in to close what little space remained between them.

Her lips were trembling, breathless and breathtaking as she pressed them against Dax’s own in the only kind of gratitude she knew, the only thing that anyone in this universe could understand. It was bitter and sweet, excruciatingly painful just like everything in this place was, the ghost of a kiss touched by all the things they both felt but neither of them could voice. _‘I’m so sorry’_ and _‘thank you’_ and _‘don’t leave me’_ and _‘I wish I could help’_ … and most of all, softer and more urgent than all the rest combined, _‘I know’_.

They were both gasping when they pulled back. Dax remembered casual flirtation, quick glances and easy appreciation. She remembered Jadzia’s eyes running over her body, curious and appreciative in near-equal measure. She remembered the way her eyes had lit up as she bragged about all the fun they could have, the two of them and Sisko. She remembered smiling and shaking her head, more disturbed by the thought of Benjamin than the thought of being so intimate with her own doppelgänger. She remembered how simple it had all been back then, how straightforward, how natural.

That was all gone now, and when Jadzia caught her breath and leaned in to kiss her again — and then again and again and again — there was nothing left in either of them but pain and desperation.

“Stay,” she pleaded into Dax’s open mouth. “Stay with me.”

Dax closed her eyes. “I can’t,” she said. “You know I can’t.”

“I know…” Jadzia whispered. “I know, I know, I know…”

But she didn’t stop. And Dax, for once, didn’t try to make her.


	31. Chapter 31

Sisko took the news with a little less grace and a lot less intimacy.

“It’s about time you got the hell out of my way,” he muttered with his usual belligerence; he was making a big show of being irritable and aggressive about the whole thing, but the edge that came so easily to his tone didn’t quite reach his eyes as he narrowed them pointedly at Dax. “Maybe now things can get back to the way they’re supposed to be.”

“I hope so,” Dax murmured, flexing her fingers and looking away.

Sisko made a strange guttural noise in his throat, suspicion coupled with amusement, but he didn’t press her. Dax studied the floor as he turned his scowl on Jadzia. “And maybe you’ll finally stop talking about her all the goddamn time.”

“Don’t count on it.” Jadzia was smiling, but just as Sisko’s irritation didn’t quite reach the parts of him that mattered, the softness of the expression wasn’t enough to unclench her jaw, or soften the sorrowful lines around her mouth. “She’s going to be in here for a very long time.” She touched the side of her head, then the side of her chest, close enough to her heart that Dax felt her own tightening in empathic grief. “And in here, too.”

The guilt was like a lead weight settling inside of her. Her whole body ached as she looked at Jadzia, and though she knew it wouldn’t help either of them to indulge the feeling now, it was more difficult than she’d expected to keep it at bay. There was nothing about this terrible place that she would miss, but still she felt a kick inside her to think of leaving it, to think of leaving Jadzia with her demons, even with Sisko there to hold her hand. It hurt to know that she wouldn’t see Jadzia’s story told through to its end, that she would probably never know how things turned out, if she lived or died, if her presence here had even helped at all.

Dax had lived eight lifetimes, but she had never walked away from a task without seeing it through to its conclusion. It was a brutal blow to taint that perfect record now, and even without the stars in Jadzia’s eyes, the cowardice was a bitter pill to swallow. Bitter, yes, but a pill just the same, and she knew that it was medicine for them both. For her sake and for Jadzia’s as well, it was the best. Neither of them could hope to survive what they were going through by leaning on the other, and they both knew that. It stung, but they knew it. Jadzia needed to find peace with herself, and Dax… well, Dax just wanted to lose herself in peace. 

“I’m sorry,” she said to Jadzia.

It wouldn’t make a difference, she knew. They’d said all they could say, whispered what little they could in halting words and stuttered half-sentence, and whimpered out the rest through breathless kisses and trembling touches that barely skimmed the skin. They had shared as much of themselves as any two people could when they already shared same identity, and Dax knew that nothing she said now could possibly add to that. It was what it was, and they were who they were; nothing could change any of that, and it was stupid to think that she could sand down all of Jadzia’s struggles with one more half-hearted apology.

“Don’t be sorry.” Jadzia’s voice was low, hushed, as if she was sharing a precious secret with a trusted confidante. “Just be okay.”

Dax had no doubt that Sisko could hear every word they said, and that he could probably see through the cracks between them. He could be an idiot sometimes, sure, but that didn’t mean he was stupid; no doubt he could see perfectly well the emotion flickering on their faces, the way they looked at each other and the way they touched, fingertips pressed against collarbones, temples, lips, twin pairs of eyes shining with all the things they couldn’t say in front of him, all the things they shared but could not voice. He knew everything, she was sure, but neither of them seemed to care. He may be her lover, but in this — probably their last moment together — Jadzia only had eyes for Dax. And Sisko, for the first time since her arrival, stood silently by and respected that.

“I am,” Dax said to Jadzia, turning her face to press her cheek against her good hand. “I am okay. Or I will be, anyway. But I’m sorry too. For everything.”

Though she spoke to Jadzia alone, her mind was elsewhere, light-years away, back on Terok Nor. She saw herself burning the body of a Keiko O’Brien — a Keiko Ishikawa — who did not deserve to die, overseeing the whole sordid affair through the eyes of a cold-blooded Intendant, a cruel and calloused tyrant who would never allow a Terran the honour of a funeral. She saw Garak at her side, licking her boots and clutching at a freshly blackened eye, cursing the name of the ignorant little Trill who had sold him out. Though she had no way of knowing what was really happening, she saw it as though she was there, as though it were taking place right there before her eyes, and when she whispered “I’m sorry” again, she could barely remember that Jadzia was the only one to hear it.

It was true. She was sorry. She was sorry beyond words, beyond thought, beyond anything. She so very sorry… but all the apologies in any universe wouldn’t be enough to make right all those wrongs.

She didn’t let it show, though. She would not allow Jadzia to see those regrets in her. She wouldn’t allow her to see where her tainted thoughts really were, wouldn’t allow her to know just how sorry she was, or why or for who. She couldn’t lay that on Jadzia’s shoulders, not when they already carried so much, couldn’t add more weight to the guilt and shame and self-loathing, the fear and the horror that she already saw in those eyes, pale as ice and just as ferocious as her own. She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t.

Jadzia needed to be strong now, stronger than she ever had before, perhaps even stronger than Dax herself had ever needed to be. She needed to look inside herself, to see the strength of the symbiont that she’d tried so hard to reject, to see the beauty and the honour it could bring her if she would just cast aside her own pain and let it do what it was born to do. If she wanted any chance of surviving Joran, she needed to trust herself first, and she would never be able to do that if she couldn’t trust the symbiont… if she couldn’t trust Dax.

Dax would not shatter that trust. After everything she’d seen of this place, and everything she’d seen of Jadzia, she would not allow either one of them to fall at the final hurdle. She could be strong until she left, and then it was down to Jadzia to take that strength and make of it what she would.

Hers was a heavy burden to carry away, the shame and the horror of what she’d been through, but Dax refused to share it. The fetters were hers to wear, and hers alone. Let Jadzia believe she was sorry for her and her alone. Let her take those apologies into her heart, the same heart that Dax could still hear beating in rhythm with her own, the one that pounded in perfect tandem with both of their struggles. Let her wrap those apologies around herself, use them as a shield against the battles still to be fought. Let her take it as a final parting gift from the woman who knew her struggles so well.

When she turned to leave, too choked up to venture another word, Jadzia stopped her. “Dax,” she said, and that one word said it all.

She pulled her into an awkward one-armed hug, tight enough to cut off both their breathing, and though she didn’t say anything, Dax felt all the farewells of two universes in the synchronicity of their still-struggling heartbeats. Her injured wrist hung at her side, painful and limp, and there was a small smile tugging at her lips as she leaned in to brush them tenderly across Dax’s own in a final kiss.

“I’m sorry I can’t go with you,” she went on after a moment, pulling back with obvious reluctance. “I really want to see you off. But it’s a long way to Bajor.” She held up her injured wrist, and the smile fell from her face. “I’m not exactly the best pilot with only one good hand.”

Dax shrugged off the apology, and the feint at self-deprecation. In all honesty, she preferred to say her farewells here anyway. It meant they had no choice but to keep them short and civil, to be polite and controlled; with Sisko standing right there, tapping his foot and rolling his eyes, there was no chance of either of them getting carried away, and no chance of Dax losing what little resolve she still had left in her. Brief goodbyes were good, and public ones were better still.

They were sending her out in one of their best stealth fighters, keeping her under the radar of the Alliance patrols and giving her the best chance of locking on to Kira’s signal when she transported back to her universe. Assuming, of course, that she was still there. Dax wasn’t especially worried about that, though; right now, all she cared about was just getting to Bajor in one piece.

In a final stroke of agonising ill-fortune, Sisko picked Smiley to escort her back. Dax didn’t exactly need his presence to add to the guilt pressing down on her, but it certainly didn’t help. They didn’t really speak much, Dax occupied by trying not to cry at the sight of him, and Smiley occupied with piloting the little ship, hands skimming over the controls like he’d been doing it his whole life.

Dax watched him, keeping her own hands folded tightly in her lap. There was a strange kind of comfort in the mundanity of watching a helmsman at work, and it was a pleasant distraction to fight off the part of her (Torias, most likely, or possibly Tobin) that wanted to point out all the hundreds of little things he was doing wrong. Dax never been a particularly good passenger, too impatient and too prone to want to do everything herself, and it was all the more difficult when she had so much on her mind, so many things to try not to think about. It was too tempting to indulge that part of her, to silence her thoughts by casually reeling off all the ways that Smiley was a bad pilot, and it was only out of respect for him and agony at the life she’d taken from him that she bit her tongue and kept her mouth shut.

When they reached Bajor, Smiley settled the ship into a high altitude orbit and turned from the helm to look at her. It was the first time he’d done so since they’d left, and there was something almost like fondness in his expression; still not a smile, of course, but closer than she would have expected. They’d barely spoken, and Dax had been far from rational on the few occasions when they had, but there was still a softness in the way he looked at her, like he had seen something familiar in her, a sense of kindness and compassion that was all too rare in the world he knew.

“The captain’s really going to miss you,” he said. Dax blinked, entirely unable to mask her surprise, and he actually ventured a laugh. “I know, I know. He hides it well. He has to, you see, being the captain and all. He’d never be able to keep the troops in line if they thought he was the sentimental type. But his… that is to say, your… well, you…”

“Jadzia,” Dax said quietly, and the name tasted like poison.

Smiley cleared his throat. “As you say. She’s… well, if you don’t mind my saying, she’s a whole lot more reasonable when you’re there. I don’t know what the two of you have been doing, but…” He shrugged, and politely ignored the way Dax blushed. “Like I say, the captain would never admit it in a million years, but I think he’s really going to miss having you around to keep her in line.”

Dax tried to laugh, but the sound died in her throat, razor-edged and raw. It still hurt to look at his face, the friendly features of Chief O’Brien so darkened by bad experiences and traumas that even she couldn’t understand, and though she tried so hard to keep from thinking too much about Keiko, she still couldn’t help remembering that she was the one who had stolen what might have been this O’Brien’s only chance for happiness in this destructive universe. They had only spoken briefly, but he was the kindest and gentlest of all the people she’d met here, the most honest and the most eager to help. It cut at her heart to think of the woman who might have been his wife, the one thing that might have brought even a shred of joy to this man who so deserved it. _Your fault,_ her conscience reminded her. _It’s all your fault._

“I’m sorry,” she said, and sighed with simultaneous relief and regret when he seemed to assume she was just responding to what he’d said. So many apologies, she thought brokenly. So many people, so much damage, so much she could never undo.

“There’s no need for ‘sorry’,” he replied, shrugging it off with his usual good-natured fortitude. “This is no place for people from your side. You’re all bloody lightweights. You wouldn’t last a month out here, much less a year, and what good are you to us if you’re dead?”

“Touché,” she chuckled weakly, then sobered. She couldn’t look at him, but that didn’t make what she was about to do any more pleasant. “Look, Chief… Smiley…”

He eyed the helm console, seeming to sense that this would be easier if he wasn’t staring at her. “Hm?”

Dax swallowed, hating herself. “I really hate to ask… I mean, I know you’re going through hell out here, and you’ve got enough to worry about… but if it’s not too much trouble… I mean, since you’re going back there anyway… I was hoping…”

He held up a hand, cutting off her rambling, and actually mustered one of his rare smiles. Dax brightened at the sight, almost forgetting her discomfort for a blessed moment or two. She was starting to understand why Sisko liked to call him ‘Smiley’; on the rare occasions he did allow himself one, it lit up everything.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” he promised. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

Dax flushed again, awkward and embarrassed. “It is,” she admitted. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but…”

“It’s not,” he assured her, speaking softly but not without passion. “Besides, I don’t imagine you’ll have to worry too much. About her, I mean. The captain probably won’t let her out of his sight for a month after this. But if it’ll help you find some peace when you leave us, I’ll be sure to check in on her every now and then. Make sure she’s eating right, that sort of thing.” His smile flickered and faded, but Dax was just grateful that it had existed at all. “You have my word, whatever that’s worth to you.”

It took every shred of the tattered self-control she still possessed to keep from hugging him until he couldn’t breathe. “It’s worth more than you’ll ever know,” she whispered.

He huffed a derisive laugh, and picked up a small device that Dax recognised as like the one that Sisko had used to beam her over here. “Don’t be so quick to sing my praises until you’ve actually rematerialised in one piece,” he quipped lightly.

Dax felt her stomach turn as she remembered her first trip through the inter-universal transporter. “Please tell me you fixed that thing…”

“I tried, anyway,” he said with a shrug, and cocked his head towards her abdomen, where the symbiont lay. “I can’t make any promises, though. It’s not like I had any joined Trills lining up to be a test-dummy, and to tell you the truth, I don’t even really know how that little bug works in the first place.” He tried to smile again, but couldn’t seem to manage it. “I don’t know if it’ll be any more bearable, but I did the best I could.”

“That’s all I could ask for,” she murmured.

He gave a noncommittal grunt. “Still wouldn’t recommend using it more often than you absolutely have to.”

“Don’t worry.” Dax sighed, feeling the truth pierce her chest. “I don’t plan on ever having to use it again.”

Smiley nodded. He stood, stretched, and crossed to the transporter pad. For a moment, he just toyed with the controls; as far as she could see, he wasn’t really doing anything of note, but he seemed so deep in thought that he almost didn’t think to look back at her as he hummed and readied the little device.

“If your friend’s still on Bajor…” he said, speaking almost to himself, and still not gracing her with so much as a glance. “I mean, your Bajor. Wherever the bloody hell that is. Anyhow, assuming she is still there, the transporter should lock on to her comm signal.”

“Just like our transporters,” Dax mused, feeling the scientist in her awakening even through the roar of emotion. “And what if she’s not still on Bajor?”

He shrugged again, so much like her Chief O’Brien that she felt a punch in her gut. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said airily. “I’m sure you’ll turn up somewhere.”

He cut off her stammering protestations by throwing her one last smile to remember him by, a flicker of light in this dark place in the final moment before she left it behind for good. He turned back to the transporter console, fiddled with a couple of controls and as she felt the familiar tingle starting to take hold, Dax realised that it was too late. Too late to protest, too late to apologise, too late to do anything at all. That was her final thought as the transporter beam gripped her. _Too late_.

And then she was paralysed, the familiar fragmented discomfort taking hold as her molecules scrambled, and then for a few horrifying moments she couldn’t see or hear anything at all, and then… and then…

“…oh.”

Smiley was right to warn her about his ineffectual tinkering. Whatever he’d done to the device, it hadn’t made the journey any more comfortable than it was last time. She materialised in a room that was strikingly unfamiliar, pastel colours and sunlight pouring in from windows the size of walls, and she just had time to make out the murmuring of voices from somewhere a short distance away, soft laughter and breathy moans, before her knees gave out and she fell to the floor.

She sensed a flurry of motion from somewhere she couldn’t make out, the rustle of sheets and the patter of bare feet on the solid floor, and caught a glimpse of too much bare skin. _Not here,_ she thought, mind latching on to the only thing it could think of, the only thing that skin meant to her. _Not here as well, oh no, please not here, please not her, please please please._ The sight of it, and the mnemonic horror that it dredged up, were more than enough to overwhelm her, to drive her down further until she was curled in on herself, arms wrapped around her middle as her senses exploded. _Not here, not her, not naked, no no no…_

It wasn’t just the sight. She could hear too, so many sounds that didn’t make sense. Awkward coughing and cries of surprise, her name — no, _Jadzia’s_ name — over and over again. Jadzia’s name in her voice, Kira’s voice… but no, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be Kira. It couldn’t be her Nerys, because when she looked up all she saw was skin, naked and exposed. It couldn’t be her. Not here, not in this place, not her Nerys. It was the Intendant, it had to be the Intendant. The Intendant was always naked, always exposed, and always calling that awful name. It had to be, it had to be…

“Jadzia!”

Dax tried to focus, but her vision clouded over. She tried so hard to look up, to make out the lines of the face staring back at her, the ridges across the nose, the earring, the close-cropped hair. She had to know, had to be sure. Was it Nerys, or was it the Intendant? Was she back there, or was she back home? Was this Terok Nor or Deep Space Nine, Bajor or the Badlands? Where was she? Who was she? What was going on?

She tried to speak, but her throat was closed up and her mouth was dry, and the best that she could manage was a heaving, half-choked whimper, a nonsensical plea that even she herself couldn’t make out.

“Is she all right?”

She recognised that voice, too. Soft and low and calm, and she tried to recollect the face that went with it. Dimly, hazily, she thought she remembered a warm smile and warm eyes, the way that Kira’s grew warm too when she talked about it, the way it warmed her smile into a mirror of his. She remembered feeling her own heart skipping a beat, utterly elated just to know that there was something — someone — that could make her beautiful Nerys happy, someone who could make her smile, who could make her warm, and why would it matter that it wasn’t her?

_He’s such a beautiful soul, Jadzia._ She remembered that too. _He’s such a beautiful soul._

And then, just like that, it made sense. Some fractured kind of sense, anyway. She really was home. She was back, she was here, she was on Bajor. She was on _Bajor,_ and so was Kira. Her Kira, her Nerys. Hadn’t she said that she would take Vedek Bareil if Dax refused to come? Hadn’t she said that he was her second choice? And here he was. Here he was, with his soft voice and his effortless calm, the warmth that soothed even Kira’s firestorm heart, that beautiful soul that made Nerys smile. _Bareil,_ of course. She felt that old familiar elation fire her heart once more, memory lit up by warmth. Of course Nerys would have sought him out when Dax left her alone; hadn’t she said she would? Of course she would, and of course they would have—

_—oh._

_Well,_ she thought, feeling her eyes roll back as the room began to dissolve around her. _That explains the nakedness._

*

_They circled her like carrion birds._

_She was back in the desert, with its sand made out of ground-up bones and the sky turned red as blood. The lakes were made from blood too, but drinking was the least of her concerns this time. She didn’t know how she’d got back here, or how long she’d been lying there, squinting up at the death-black sun, waiting for it to sink down over the horizon, or else plunge the world into darkness and put her out of her misery. She didn’t know anything at all, really, except that she was here, and she was back._

_Above her, they waited, circling and watching, biding their time until she died or else grew so weak that she couldn’t possibly fight back. She knew what they wanted from her, knew how hungry they were for their little trophies, their tributes to all the damage she’d done. They had come so far, chased her for so long… it was the least she could do to give them what they wanted._

_The truth was, she was as good as dead already, a corpse to their carrion feeding. But that wasn’t enough in a place like this, and it wouldn’t be enough in the to slake their insatiable thirst. They didn’t just want her dead; they wanted her willing, and that was exactly what she was. If they wanted to take her apart and fight amongst themselves over the scraps, let them. If it would make amends for any of the things she’d done, then let them carve her up a hundred times, or a thousand, or a million. Let them rend the flesh from her body, if it would appease them, and grind down her bones to feed the sand. It would hurt like hell, if she was foolish or stubborn enough to live through it, but she had earned that too. The hurt, and the hell. She’d earned it all._

_Garak went first. The smallest prize for the smallest crime, and she supposed it was only fitting that he would be the one to silence her for good._

_She didn’t resist as he reached into her mouth, curved steel hot and serrated against her tongue as he cut it out of her. Such a permanent punishment for one stupid mistake, she thought as the pain left her gasping and blind. For a moment, she let herself pretend that it wasn’t fair. But then, hadn’t that one stupid mistake punished him as well? Hadn’t her fool-hearted carelessness left him butchered and mutilated? Didn’t he deserve vengeance? Didn’t he deserve to make sure she never said a word against him again?_

_She deserved it too, she reminded herself again, biting down on nothing to keep from choking on the blood that filled her empty mouth. She had betrayed him, sold him out when all he’d done was try to help her, and if he wanted to make sure that she never spoke another word at all, then so be it. Let him hang her tongue on his wall. Let him make a bow-tie out of it. Let him do whatever he wanted; she couldn’t use it any more._

_“What a waste,” Kira sighed, somewhere above her and far away. “She was always so talented with that tongue.”_

_“Oh, but she looks so much better without it.” Jadzia sounded even more distant than Kira, a world away, or perhaps a universe. “I never liked how she looked so much like me.”_

_“Inferiority complex?” Kira asked, coquettish. “There’s really no need. You’re just as delicious as she is. And I should know: I’ve tasted you both.”_

_Dax groaned and cringed against the sound of their tangled laughter, Kira’s so seductive and Jadzia’s half-mad._

_“Nice clean cuts,” Keiko murmured, the voice of reason to bring the others back to the task at hand. She looked thoughtful, nodding her approval as she peered into Dax’s mouth. “Excellent work, Garak. You always were the model student.”_

_Garak bowed in acknowledgement. “I appreciate the compliment,” he said, “but this is little more than child’s play for a man of my particular talents. Strip off her skin, and I’ll fashion you the most exquisite dress you can imagine. Or perhaps her lungs, and you’ll have the best shoes in the Alpha Quadrant…”_

_“It’s not shoes I need,” Keiko replied, voice as cold as Dax had ever heard it, and she shuddered to look at the hollow sockets where her eyes had once been._

_She knew what was coming next, of course, but it didn’t frighten her any more than the thought of losing her tongue to Garak’s delicate tailor’s cuts. She had seen too much already, and it would almost be a relief to not have to see any more. Keiko had told her to learn, to watch her fate and to take a lesson from it, but Dax had not been able to do that. She had failed her in death, just as she had failed to save her life, and if she would not use her sight to learn, then it was only fair that she lose it completely._

_Still, though she was as prepared as anyone could hope to be for something so horrible, it was more than she could do to suppress the gurgling scream when the moment came at last. She hadn’t done much more than whimper and moan as Garak had carved into her mouth, but this was something else entirely, and not even the loss her tongue was enough to stifle the agony as it tore out of her throat in endless howls, wordless and incoherent. She screamed again and again and again, but all the screaming in the world could not drown out the slippery slash of impossibly long fingernails digging in to claim her sight._

_They endured, the pain and the screams together, on and on and on, even after the task was done; it was the only link she had left, the only thing she could use to tether herself to the world outside as total darkness poured in to fill up the space where she had once been able to see._

_She could still hear, and that helped a little. She could hear her own voice, the endless wails raging on and on as the pain refused to subside, and she could hear their voices too, the four of them together at last. It helped her to shape their faces in her mind’s eye — the only eye she had left to see anything — and it helped to imagine their smug satisfaction as they looked down on her. They were all she had left, after all, her judges and juries and executioners, her own self-destruction made manifest in the voices of the people she had so wronged._

_“Lovely,” Garak was saying, his usual edge of sarcasm turning the words cool and bringing their sincerity into question. “They look so much better on you than her.”_

_Dax groaned at the thought. She would have given up so much more than just her eyes if it would undo what had happened to Keiko, if it could reverse the flow of time, the flow of blood, the flow of events that had led to her death. She would give up her lungs and all the breath in them, her heart and all the blood it pumped through her, her throat and the cries still tearing out from it. She would have given her life to undo what she had done, but Keiko didn’t want her life. An eye for an eye, wasn’t that the old Earth saying? An eye for an eye and a life for a life? But then, of course, Keiko had always been reasonable, always been considerate. An eye for a life; it hardly seemed fair, but if that was what she wanted, Dax would give it up freely, and her howls of pain as well._

_“My turn…”_

_She didn’t need her eyes to see the malice that she knew was spreading on Kira’s face, the anticipation and excitement. She wanted to say something, to beg her like she had so many times before, but she couldn’t speak without a tongue, and what was the point in trying when she couldn’t see how she’d react anyway?_

_“You never did know how to share,” Jadzia grumbled. “When’s it my turn?”_

_“When I’ve had my fun,” Kira replied tartly. “I’ve waited a long time for this, and I’m not going to be rushed because you Trills never bothered to learn the meaning of patience.”_

_“They don’t bother to learn a lot of things,” Keiko volunteered brightly. “It’s a waste of time trying to teach them. I would know.”_

_“You can teach me anything you like…” Kira purred, and Dax didn’t need her eyes to know what was happening between them in the silence that followed. “Now, where was I?”_

_Just like before, she knew what was coming long before she heard the words to confirm it, but she didn’t have enough strength left to brace against it. She knew Kira, both of them but especially this one, and she knew that there was only one thing she would take, only one thing she could possibly want from a Dax who had been twisted and broken beyond repair. Of course she wanted the one thing she could enjoy, and just like she always did Dax would give it up willingly._

_“That’s an odd choice,” Keiko remarked, amusement touched with derision and just a hint of jealousy as Dax felt thin Bajoran fingers wrap around her wrists. “She even doesn’t know how to use them properly.”_

_“Oh, but she does.” There was hunger in Kira’s voice, and Dax let herself imagine that it was reflected in her eyes as well, those deep and dangerous eyes, so beautiful but so deadly. She wished that she could see it, but wishing just made her empty eye sockets hurt all the more, and drew another whimpering scream from her bloodied lips. “You have no idea how many wonderful things she can do with them.”_

_“You’re right,” Jadzia interjected, voice thick with bitterness. “I wouldn’t have any idea. She refused to share them me. She refused to share anything. She said she was all yours.”_

_“She will be.” Kira laughed, and Dax flinched at the sound. “Oh, she will be…”_

_This time, Dax didn’t scream. The pain was excruciating as the blade cut through flesh and bone, through muscle and sinew and everything else, but after the loss of her eyes, it barely registered at all. Hadn’t she damaged her hands enough all by herself? What more was one more clean cut?_

_Besides, she thought, what good were her hands now, when she couldn’t see and couldn’t speak and couldn’t do anything? What good were her hands at all when she was going to die here? Let Kira take them if she wanted them. After all, wasn’t she the one who had got so much pleasure out of them? Wasn’t she the one who had enjoyed them so thoroughly? Just as it was only fair that Garak should claim the tongue that had caused him such distress, just as it was only fair that Keiko should take her eyes if she refused to use them herself, wasn’t it also fair that her hands should go to someone who would appreciate them, someone who would make good use of them? Of course they should go to Kira. Who else would love them like she did?_

_Dax could feel warm breath on the side of her face, primal and predatory, and though she couldn’t see at all, she could tell that it was Kira. Warm breath, seduction laced with brutality. She could feel the desire, the heat and the want radiating out from her, need mixed with pity, and it made her feel sicker than all the pain of a thousand dismembered body parts. It was not her Kira, the one she wanted, the one she cared for; she knew that, too, but it didn’t stop her from keening as those thin Bajoran fingers slid between her thighs one last time. This Kira was the one who wanted her, so different and so deadly, and all Dax could do as she leaned in to lick a path from her butchered mouth up to the edge of her hollow eye socket, was whimper and choke and wish she could say ‘Nerys’._

_“I promise I’ll treat them well,” Kira whispered, seductive, hot breath teasing against the side of Dax’s head, like she was sharing a treasured secret. “As long as they treat me well too.”_

_Dax wanted to reply, to tell her that they wouldn’t, that they couldn’t, that Keiko was right; she didn’t know how to use her hands, and her hands could not use themselves. She wanted to take this last victory from the woman who had broken her so completely, but of course she couldn’t. She couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even think. All she could do was scream, and she was so tired of screaming._

_Kira laughed as she pulled back, leaving Dax with broken wrists bleeding out onto the sand and a different kind of slickness pooling further down. She longed to grasp at the sand, to feel the ground-up bones trickle between her fingers, but of course she couldn’t do that either. She had no fingers, no palms, nothing at all, and though she couldn’t see, she could feel the haemorrhage of blood as it spilled out and fed the dead. She couldn’t stop that either, not that she wanted to. All she could do was lie there, sobbing and choking and wishing it would end, praying for the pain and the blood and the mutilation of her body to kill her quickly, wishing that Kira’s beloved Prophets would show her mercy, even if she didn’t deserve it._

_Jadzia, of course, took her legs._

_“What else?” she asked, as though she’d forgotten that Dax could not answer. “How else would I stop you from leaving me?”_

_“Clever,” Keiko told her, and the others hummed their approval in a symphony of murmurs. “Very clever. She’ll never learn anything now.”_

_Dax wished that was true. It would make all of this so much easier if she couldn’t learn, if she really didn’t know anything. Easier to lose her sight if she didn’t know what she’d lost. Easier to lose her tongue without all those secrets and regrets aching to be let out. Easier to lose her hands and her legs if she’d never felt the urge to walk and run and touch and feel. Easier to lose any part of her without the knowledge of how much they were worth._

_Keiko was wrong; she had learned. She had learned, and learned, and learned. She had learned until there was nothing left of her. She just hadn’t learned the right lessons._

_The lessons she had learned, the wrong ones, hurt far deeper than all the pain of severed limbs and gouged eyes and carved-out tongues. It hurt far deeper than anything she had ever known to learn that she would die alone with those regrets, that Garak would never hear her apologise again, that Keiko would never see how much she had taught her, that Nerys would never feel the press of her fingertips…_

_But the worst lesson was yet to come._

_Her first mistake was in thinking it was over. Even if there was anything left of her to take — her ears, her ribs, even her lungs — there was nobody left to claim it. Besides, even if there had been, even if she had forgotten some vulture circling above waiting for the leftover scraps to gorge themselves on, what would she care anyway? She was as good as lifeless already, little more than a hollowed-out husk, a mutilated body just waiting for the breath to leave it like everything else had._

_Garak, Kira, Keiko, even little Jadzia… they had all claimed their trophies, and they had earned them. Who was Dax to deny any of them? Who was Dax at all?_

_“Nobody.”_

_What little breath she had left caught in her throat, stuttering and wet. She knew that voice, would recognise it a thousand light-years away. It terrified her now, just as it always did, even as she knew it was ridiculous. There was nothing left to take, nothing left to manipulate, nothing left to twist and torture, nothing left to be shaped into something terrible. There was nothing left of her at all, so why was he here?_

_It was no surprise that he could hear her thoughts, that he had heard the unvoiced question as surely as if she’d still had a tongue to ask it with. He’d always been able to do that, always tapping into her mind and piercing the things she couldn’t voice; he’d always done it, even before she’d lost her ability to speak. She wanted to speak now, though, wanted to cry out a warning, to choke out his name in a voice made thick not by blood but by fear._

_Joran._

_“Poor little girl,” he said. “Can’t see what’s in front of her. Can’t stand on her own. Can’t hold on to anything. Can’t even cry for help. Silly little girl. Whatever shall we do with her?”_

_“I have a few suggestions,” Kira purred._

_Garak and Keiko muttered their agreement, the three of them crying out all their ideas in a restless rallying cry, all the ways that Dax should suffer, all the ways they could make it happen, all the ways they would punish her if he left her to their tender mercies. Apparently, it wasn’t enough to see her cut down until there was nothing left, not enough to rend her apart piece by piece, to tear her body asunder and leave her unable to die. Apparently, it wasn’t enough to take their trophies and go, to see justice done and let it rest. It wasn’t enough. They wanted more. That was another lesson she should have learned by now: they always wanted more._

_Jadzia, of course, was silent. Dax knew why; she was afraid of him too. She always had been, just as much as Dax herself was. Little Jadzia. She’d never been able to fight him with or without Dax’s help, so what chance did she have of confronting him now? She would hold her tongue just as Garak now held Dax’s, no matter what she thought or felt._

_Dax supposed that it should offer a tragic kind of comfort to know that at least Jadzia wouldn’t be able to join in as the others condemned her. In a way it was, but what meagre muscle memory she still had of her tongue could taste the echo of failure and disappointment, the shame of knowing that it was her fault, that Jadzia’s weakness in facing up to him just reflected her own inabilities, and there was no comfort to be found in that. Jadzia was afraid because Dax had not made her brave enough; it was her fault, just like everything else. Another mistake, and another wasted life. If she’d had anything left in her at all, she would have offered it to Jadzia just then, and hoped it would be enough to help her find some courage._

_But then, of course she did have something left, didn’t she? Just one thing, small and simple, but it was the most precious thing of all. Nothing else could compare, and in the instant she remembered it, she realised why he was here._

_“You know,” he echoed, speaking her thoughts just as he always did. “You know what I want, don’t you?”_

_She imagined him leaning in to hear her answer, and the carved-up husk of Dax’s body trembled because he was right. She did know. She knew what he wanted. She knew why he was here. She knew everything, and it was worse than anything she could have imagined._

_He wanted Dax._

_Not the dying body, and not the dead soul within. He didn’t want the shell of a creature torn up and picked apart by those who had earned their trophies, pieces of her taken and worn like clothing and the rest left to wither and rot under the heat-blackened sun and the blood-red sky. He didn’t want the little girl who could not bear to be called ‘Jadzia’, or the heart of the warrior that wished it could still remember what honour tasted like. She would have given any of those things to him without a second thought, but he did not want them. He didn’t want her at all._

_What he wanted, he took without hesitation or remorse, and nothing in any universe could ever have prepared her for it._

_Dax._

_She tried to cry out, but for a moment the horror left her mute. This was a hundred times worse than losing her tongue or her eyes, a thousand times worse than losing her hands or her legs. It was worse than any mutilation her body could ever endure, and the pain that struck now went so much deeper than the tear and cut of muscle and flesh, the rending of bone and the spilling of blood. It brought with it all of those things as well, of course, but the pain cut far deeper than any blade, any fingernail, anything at all, rending through her and silencing even the parts of her that could still scream, the parts that could still shape forgotten words even without a tongue, the parts that could still reach out even without fingers, the parts that could run without legs and see without eyes. He cut into the deepest and most fundamental part of her, the part that she was sworn to defend, the part that lay open and unprotected, the only thing she could not bear to lose. He cut her open and tore her apart, exposing the thing within, the life that beat more beautifully than any heart, and all she could do was scream and scream and scream._

_Dax was what he wanted, and Dax was what he took._

_Though she couldn’t see, she could still feel, and she felt the pain like a heartbeat, a life severed from within her. It was like nothing she could have imagined, nothing she could ever have prepared for, agony screaming through her abdomen louder even than the screams in her head as she felt him splitting her stomach and spilling her insides. She wished that was all he would do, all he wanted, wished that this was what he came for. She could live without her insides, could live without anything at all, but she could not live without that heartbeat, that life inside of her, the life that did not belong to her but was still hers. She could live without Jadzia, but she could not live without Dax._

_Not Dax, she prayed. Not Dax. Please. Not Dax. Please…_

_She could give up her eyes, her tongue, her hands, her legs. She could give up her ribs and her lungs and her stomach, could give up every muscle, every organ, every molecule within her. She could give up every last worthless part of her body and her soul and her mind, could turn her bones to sand and use her remains to feed this barren and soulless desert. She could give up everything she had, everything she was, everything she had ever been and might yet become. She could give up everything, but she could not give up Dax._

_Please, she thought again. Please. Not Dax. Not Dax. Not—_

_“Dax,” he said, and she knew that she was lost._

_She tried to plea, to beg, even to scream again, but she had no tongue left to shape the words and no strength left to shape the agony, and any sound she might have formed died a strangled death, leaving her to wish the rest of her could follow. Please. Not Dax. Please. Not—_

_“Dax,” he said again, and reached in to take back what was his._

*

“Dax!”

The name hurt. Everything hurt. She groaned, curling in on herself, trying to block it all out, the sound and the sensation, the only things left to her now. She could still feel the echoes of agony, the ripples of it left over from the dream, eyes raw and sore, mouth thick and filled with the taste of blood, hands and legs numb and useless, spasms cramping her abdomen in ruthless waves as she clawed her way back to herself. 

In its own way, the groggy discomfort of wakefulness was almost as bad as the pain of being carved up. She could barely breathe through the fetters of phantasmic pain, but she forced her way through them, forced her fingers to clench, legs to twitch, eyes and tongue to remember that they were there. There was nothing she could do for her stomach, only remember that it was the symbiont, and that meant it was still inside her, and she clung to that truth, desperate to believe it, as she stumbled through the haze to remember who she was, where and why and how.

_Bajor,_ she thought, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Strong, steady hands at her face. Long fingers curling under her jaw, tilting her head up. Beautiful dark eyes gazing deep into her own, but only for a moment before dazzling white light rushed in to blind her. It was so bright that for a moment she wondered if she really had lost her eyes, if she really would be sightless forever, but the moment passed quickly, and she blinked and tensed as a high pale ceiling swam into view a moment later. That was real, she could tell. It was too solid and too well defined to ever be a construct of her dream, and it had to be real because it wasn’t trying to hurt her.

“Jadzia?”

“Nerys…” The sound of that perfect name, true for the first time in what felt like forever, caused a choking sob to wrench from her aching belly, blood-tasting bile thick in her throat as she coughed up the tears.

“Jadzia!” Kira sounded tearful as well, and the sound of a similar sob wrenching out from within her was almost enough to drive Dax unconscious again. “Thank the Prophets! We were worried sick about you!”

Dax closed her eyes, almost wishing that she really was blind, because the sight of Kira’s face hovering so close to her own was even more painful than the spasms still wracking her stomach. It hurt like hell, the echo of agony as the symbiont was ripped out of her, but even that was nothing next to the sight of that face, her face, Kira’s face. _Nerys_ , she thought, and it should have felt so wonderful, but all she could see was the Intendant and all she could feel was pain.

“Nerys,” she tried to whisper, but the name just brought up more acid-soaked tears.

“Jadzia,” Kira said again, and Dax’s whole body trembled at the terrible name. “If you ever do something like that again…”

Dax tried to laugh, but she couldn’t. She could barely speak at all. “Sorry,” she managed, and sobbed all over again as she thought of Keiko and Smiley and Jadzia. _Sorry,_ and she really was. She was so sorry.

“It’s all right. You’re back now.”

She could just about make out Bareil’s silhouette, small and unimposing a short distance away. He was quiet and stoic, hovering near the full-length window, close enough to be within reach if he was needed but still sufficiently far away to grant them a little privacy. She supposed that was a mark of respect for them both, for Kira who cared so deeply about her friend and for Dax who had been through so much. She didn’t know whether to be grateful for the kindness of the gesture or offended by the assumption that she might need it in the first place.

It made her feel weak and useless, impotent, and she wanted to lash out and be angry but she didn’t have the strength and her stomach hurt so much that she couldn’t stand up even if she’d wanted to. She hated that as well, and wished she could blame Bareil and his courtesy for it. She already felt like an intruder; she did not want to be treated like an invalid as well.

“How long was I out?” she managed, groggy and disoriented.

“Long enough,” Kira said, voice sharp. Dax recognised the defence mechanism, a favourite among the Bajorans she’d met, unnecessary aggression as a shield to cover up more vulnerable emotions. “By the Prophets, Jadzia!” she went on in a shrill outburst. “What were you thinking?”

“Don’t call me that,” Dax forced out, before she could stop herself. It came out as a plea, barely above a whisper and as weak and wretched as a child. “Please. Don’t. I’m not… I don’t… I’m…”

Kira’s expression flickered for a moment, darkening with fresh concern as Dax stammered and whimpered, lips trembling around words that would not come. Blessedly, she seemed to think better than to push the issue, uncomfortable with Dax still sprawled untidily on the floor and Bareil standing by so close. And so, instead of questioning her, she just held her by the shoulders, slender fingers pressing firmly but gently against the tight muscle, and nodded.

“All right,” she said, but there was a guarded tension in her voice that said they would revisit the issue as soon as Dax had her strength back. “How do you feel?”

Gingerly, and with a little help, Dax managed to ease herself upright. She still ached a bit, but the majority of the pain had dissipated into the space between dream and waking; even the cramping in her abdomen was starting to fade now, becoming more bearable as the symbiont oriented itself to its new surroundings. Still, though, as soon as she got into a sitting position, she dropped her head between her knees, breathing through her nose and taking advantage of the excuse not to look at Kira. It was painful enough just to hear her voice right now; she couldn’t bear to see her face as well, couldn’t bear to look at her with the fresh memory of the Intendant’s sweet cruelty.

“I’m okay,” she said, acid burning again in her throat as she rocked back and forth. “That… that transporter device they use to cross over… it’s not very friendly to the symbiont.”

She straightened up just a little, just enough to touch her abdomen, fingers spread to cover as much surface as she could, sensing and protecting the creature inside, reassuring herself that it was still in there. Another sharp pain spasmed through her stomach, mnemonic agony screaming in her head as she remembered once again the phantasmal Joran reaching in to tear the symbiont out of her. She hugged herself and groaned, a small and helpless sound that seemed to go straight through Kira, because she sucked in her breath through her teeth and heaved it out in a frustrated sigh.

“I never should have let that impersonator take you…”

“He wasn’t an impersonator,” Dax argued, head still between her knees. “He was Benjamin Sisko. He was Benjamin, just as much as our Commander Sisko is. He was… he…” She trailed off, catching her breath. “It’s just… it’s a very different world over there…”

“You could have died over there,” Kira said. “I don’t care what kind of world it is, or what kind of people they have. I don’t care about what kind of Benjamin Sisko that bastard is. I care that he took you away from me.” Her voice softened, and Dax raised her head to watch the darkness rippling in her eyes. “I don’t care about him, and I don’t care about his universe either. All I care about is you, and all I know is that you could have died.”

Dax groaned. She hadn’t died, of course, but a part of her couldn’t help wishing that she had. If it could bring back Keiko and undo the chaos she’d wrought… if it could make right all the wrongs she’d inflicted on that universe and its people, she would have taken her own death in a heartbeat. But that was not an option, and the fact that she hadn’t died really wasn’t much of a consolation after everything she’d endured and everything she’d done.

“I didn’t,” she said out loud, and hated the way her voice cracked on the last syllable. “I didn’t die, did I? I didn’t die, and I’m not… I’m not dead.” The truth of it resonated again, punching her in the gut and making her feel very small. “I’m not dead. I’m not dead. I’m not… I’m not…”

She choked on a fresh wave of tears, overwhelmed by the unbearable reality. She wasn’t dead. She was alive, and that meant she would have to live with it.

Kira frowned. She studied her for a long moment, looking very much like she wanted to turn this moment into an interrogation. Patience had never been her strong suit, Dax knew, and she looked like she wanted nothing more than to shake her until she spilled her guts, spewed out every detail of where she’d been and what she’d done, everything that had happened. Dax could see the worry shaping itself into impatience on her face, creasing deep with urgent unease, and she knew how much effort it took for her to bite back that impulse, to keep her hands gentle and soft as she wiped the cooling sweat from Dax’s face, to be kind where all she wanted was to make demands.

No doubt she would ask all of those questions soon enough, and once she was strong enough Dax would have no choice but to answer them with all the honesty she had, but at least for the time being Kira didn’t push her. Even an angry militant Bajoran could see that Dax was in no condition to be pushed at all just then, and so she held herself in check. She stared at her for a long moment, quietly thoughtful and visibly frustrated, struggling to figure out the best way to deal with a shell-shocked and shaking Trill.

At long last, she took a breath, steadying herself far more than Dax. “Jadzia…”

“Don’t,” Dax blurted out, feeling the name hang like a noose around her name. “I told you. Don’t call me that. Don’t call me…” She shook her head. “I’m not her. She’s Jadzia. I’m just… I’m just…”

But what was she? She couldn’t say ‘Dax’, not after the dream, not with her stomach still clenching and cramping, agony flinching through her in waves as she remembered the symbiont’s name sneered in Joran’s voice as he ripped it out of her. Though she was awake now, and unharmed, she could still feel the strain of it in her belly, a steady pulse of pain that came and went in time with the memories, and she knew it would take more than just knowing it was psychosomatic to banish it completely. She touched her abdomen again, tapping out the rhythm of the symbiont’s heartbeat against the curve of too-tight muscle, and waited for the spasms to ease. She couldn’t call herself ‘Dax’, not until they stopped completely. But then, what could she call herself? Who was she? _What_ was she?

She didn’t know, but Kira did. Kira always knew.

“Lieutenant,” she said, and just like that Dax knew too.

She wanted to kiss her for making it so simple, for cutting through the chaos of her confused identity, who was Jadzia and who was Dax, which voice inside her head was truly her own, for cutting through it all in a single word and reducing her to the one thing that grounded her, the one thing that hadn’t been tainted by that place, the one thing that tethered her to this universe and this identity, to the woman kneeling before her and the full-length window and the sunlight streaming in, to Kira Nerys and Vedek Bareil, to a Bajor that was familiar and beautiful, a Bajor that had suffered and healed and a Starfleet lieutenant who was here to protect it. She wanted to take her in her arms and hold her so tight that all of their ribs broke, to hold her until neither of them could breathe and neither of them wanted to. She wanted to hold her until she was sure it really was that simple.

“Major?” she whispered, almost scared.

Kira smiled, beautiful and Bajoran. “Welcome back,” she said, reverent and awestruck. “Welcome home.”


	32. Chapter 32

Home.

It was a strange idea, and Dax found that she couldn’t make it make sense. Home was Trill, with its cold temperatures, snow and ice and winter sun, dazzling whites and silver greys and deep purple seas. Home was Deep Space Nine, surrounded by stars and science, stability at the heart of a wormhole. Home was a comfortable bed or a threadbare robe, a bookshelf filled with favourite stories or an old table with coffee stains on the surface. Home was familiarity and contentment, warmth and security, friendship and family. It was all the things she’d almost forgotten.

This wasn’t home. This was Bajor.

But then, wasn’t Bajor a home to so many? It was home to Bareil, and to Kira, and to all the countless Bajorans who had risked their lives to fight for its freedom. Nerys would say that Bajor was home, and in some distant corner of her mind Dax knew that that should be enough to make it feel like her home too.

But it didn’t. It didn’t feel like home; it didn’t even feel familiar. The sun was too high in the sky outside, the windows were too long and too wide, the carpets too soft and the weather was too warm. It all felt wrong, unnatural and uncomfortable; it made her spots itch. The room was too big, and it felt like it was someone else’s property, like she was an intruder into someone else’s life, an unwanted visitor who had fallen out of the sky and found herself suddenly surrounded by familiar faces in strange new places. This was Kira’s home, and Bareil’s, and it was no place for someone like her.

She didn’t belong here, any more than she had belonged there, in that dark and twisted universe. This place felt as wrong as that place had, and the newness of her surroundings mingled with the familiarity of Kira’s face, her eyes and the curve of her jaw, to make her feel dizzy. _Nerys,_ she thought, and the name struck her between the eyes like a bolt of lightning, sharp and blinding.

“Nerys.” Saying it aloud made it worse, and she heard herself whimper.

It sounded wrong. It tasted wrong. Just like this place, this room that was too big and the sunlight that was too warm, Nerys felt wrong. Dax’s throat tightened, lungs squeezing against her ribs, like her chest was too small to fit all the air she needed, but even as she tried to breathe it just got smaller and smaller, impossibly tight, until she was sure that she would choke.

 _Panic,_ she realised. _You’re panicking. Everything’s wrong, and you’re panicking._

“Jadzi—” Kira cut herself off quickly, before she could finish the name and risk making Dax’s condition even worse. “What is it?” she asked instead. “What’s wrong?”

Dax shook her head. She felt shaky and weak, light-headed, like she’d tried to climb a mountain without taking the proper precautions and was succumbing to an unexpected bout of altitude sickness. She knew there was nothing really wrong with her, but nobody had thought to tell her body, and the more she tried to think about it the harder it was to breathe. _Panic,_ she thought again, and gasped for breath as her head ached and spun.

“It’s nothing,” she forced out through gritted teeth; she was so used to being with Jadzia, to insisting for her sake that everything was perfectly fine, it came as second nature to cling to that feigned strength now. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. It’s… I’m…”

“It’s not ‘nothing’.” Kira’s face had clouded over again, made dark with worry. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Dax swallowed hard. “Everything,” she whimpered, and cradled her head. “Everything’s wrong.”

She pressed her face to her knees, gulping air. She wanted to tell Kira to shut up, to beg her to stop talking, to slap her or shove her, to do anything she could just to get away from her, this woman who looked so much like the Intendant, this woman who was her friend. She couldn’t stop thinking of that foul tyrant, of a Kira Nerys whose face was dark with a very different sentiment, a Kira who could make her lungs constrict just like this and take pleasure when Dax stopped breathing.

She didn’t want to think of her now. She wanted to think of home, of Trill and Deep Space Nine and a Kira who knew her well enough to call her ‘Lieutenant’ when she couldn’t endure the sound of any other name. She wanted to think of Bajor, liberated and free for the first time in generations, of Kira and Bareil with soft earth between their toes and sweet air in their lungs, the ground beneath their feet sturdy and steady and the skies above sheltering and protective. She wanted to wrap that word, _home_ , around herself until everything else bled away, until all that remained was freedom and faith.

She wanted so desperately to think of all that, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t think of faith when she had none, couldn’t think of freedom when she was trapped inside herself, couldn’t think of home when she didn’t know what the word meant. She couldn’t even think of her beloved Nerys when she was right there in front of her. All she could think of was that terrible place, that dark and deadly Terok Nor inhabited by Bajorans who had never known oppression and never had to fight for their survival. All she could think of was the Kira who owned that place, the terrible tyrant who had put Dax’s fingers around her throat and driven the pleasure out of her by force.

When she tried to push that moment out of her thoughts, to remember that the Kira gazing up at her was not the Intendant, instead she saw the Kira of her dreams, a strange hybrid Kira who was neither of them, a Kira who had taken her hands in payment for all those times Dax had killed her with them. So many Kiras, so many different types of pain, and she wanted to banish them all, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t strong enough and she wasn’t brave enough, and even though she knew deep down that the woman staring at her was her Kira, her Nerys, she didn’t have enough faith to believe in her.

 _Kira,_ she thought. _Nerys._ But the visions and memories of a cherished friend that had kept her sane in the Intendant’s bed had abandoned her now, and all she could see was blood.

“Nerys.”

Dax had all but forgotten that Vedek Bareil was there at all, but the sound of his voice cut through the clamour in her head with pinpoint precision. Though he spoke very quietly, he broke through everything else in the room, rending the air between Dax and Kira and easing the whipcord tension stiffening both their bodies.

Kira didn’t say anything, but she turned to look up at him, and the sudden softening of her eyes and her shoulders made it quite clear that she would heed whatever he had to say.

“I know it’s not really any of my business…” he went on, murmuring in that sweet spiritual voice that made him such a good vedek, “but I think Jadz— Lieutenant Dax might benefit from a little fresh air.” He glanced at Dax, though more out of courtesy than any real interest, then turned his attention back on Kira. “She has just been through an ordeal, after all, and I can’t think of anything better at soothing the soul.”

Kira bristled, sensing a challenge and rising to it with her usual quickness. “You’re right,” she said flatly. “It’s not any of your business.”

Bareil sighed. “Nerys…”

“Don’t ‘Nerys’ me.” Still, though, she softened, as though she couldn’t help herself. “I know you mean well, Antos, but she’s clearly not in any condition to—”

“Actually,” Dax interrupted, “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

Kira narrowed her eyes, clearly sensing the rebellion rising up against her. Dax wondered if she would respond in the same way the Intendant did, by quashing it before it had a chance to rise. Her stomach clenched again at the thought, and she gritted her teeth to keep from doubling over.

“You’re hardly in any fit state to know what is and isn’t a good idea,” Kira observed, quiet but pointed.

Dax forced a chuckle. “Maybe not,” she conceded, and it was the first time since she’d rematerialised that she’d managed to keep her voice from cracking. “But I think it might do me some good to clear my head a bit. Getting some fresh air sounds lovely.”

Bareil smiled. “You see?” he said to Kira.

“Of course she’d agree with you,” Kira argued. “She’d say anything if it meant disagreeing with me, wouldn’t you?”

Dax mustered a smile. “He’s right,” she said. “I’m not sick, and I’m not hurt—”

“Not hurt?” Kira echoed, aghast. “Have you seen yourself in a mirror lately?”

That stung, and Dax stiffened. There were no mirrors in the rebel camp, and she’d spent the last day or so of her time on Terok Nor stuck in a holding cell. She had no idea what she looked like, and she’d been in pain for so long that she could no longer make sense of which parts of her body still ached and why. She couldn’t remember what it was like to move without something hurting, and it had become so close to second nature that after a while she simply stopped noticing it at all, much less wondering if it might not be normal.

“I’m fine,” she said again, and emphasised the point by stumbling to her feet. She was a little unsteady, but stayed upright well enough, and she looked to Bareil for support. “Besides, I’m just stepping outside. It’s not like I’m…”

She trailed off, but Kira had already caught the implication. “…crossing over to a parallel universe filled with untrustworthy psychopaths?” she offered, sounding bitter.

Dax deflated. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Nerys.” Bareil stepped forwards now, dropping a gentle hand onto Kira’s shoulder and diffusing the moment before it could get any worse. “She’s not an invalid.” 

“I know that,” Kira snapped, as though she felt everyone she trusted was turning against her. “But—”

“I know you mean well,” he said, shooting her own words back at her. “But she’s a strong and resourceful woman who is perfectly capable of knowing what’s best for herself.” He smiled at Dax, encouraging and reassuring, and Dax felt her spine straighten with newfound defiance. “She’s not going to fall into a coma just from being in direct sunlight for a few minutes.”

Kira muttered a few choice curses under her breath, seeming to realise that the argument was running away from her. On a good day, there was no doubt in any of their minds that she could silence either one of them with little more than a word or a glare, but she didn’t stand a chance against the two of them together, and she knew it. And so, conceding with what little dignity she still had, she threw up her hands.

“Fine,” she huffed. “If you’re that desperate to go outside, who am I to stop you?” She forced herself to calm down a bit, if only for Bareil’s sake. “I suppose I could show you around the gardens, if you like…”

Dax felt the colour drain from her face, as though Kira had just suggested throwing her in a vat of molten lava. She knew that she had the best intentions, but the very idea frightened her more than she would ever admit. The last thing she wanted was Kira breathing down her neck as she tried to catch her breath, Kira looking into her eyes as she tried to remember where and who and what she was, Kira’s voice in her ear as she tried not to think about the Intendant…

The last thing she needed was Kira, she realised, and it took everything she had to keep from breaking down in tears at the thought. Kira, whose faith had gotten her through the worst moments. Kira, who had kept Dax strong just by existing in her memory. Kira, who was the Intendant. Kira, who had taken her again and again. Kira, who had gasped and choked with Dax’s hands around her throat…

She couldn’t. She _couldn’t_.

Once again, it was Bareil who saved her. “Come now, Nerys,” he said, voice light, ever the voice of reason. “Do you really think she’ll feel any better with you following at her heels the whole time? The last thing she needs is someone shadowing her every step and panicking every time she stops to catch her breath.”

Dax wanted to weep with relief. “It’s nothing personal,” she insisted, though she couldn’t quite bring herself to meet Kira’s eye as she said it. “It’s just… after everything that… I mean… after…” She gritted her teeth. “I need a little time to get my bearings. On my own. You’re…” She wanted to say _‘making it worse’_ , but she couldn’t bear to think of hurting Kira with the truth. And so, because it was safer, she lied. “It’s not about you, Ne…” The name lodged in her throat, strangling and gagging her. “…Major.”

Of course, Kira saw through the untruth, and caught the way she stumbled over her name. Somehow, though she couldn’t possibly understand what had happened on the other side, she seemed to recognise herself as the source of Dax’s pain. She was perceptive, and Dax knew it wouldn’t take much to pick up on the way she flinched and shuddered when they looked at each other. It stung, Dax could tell, cutting like a betrayal, and when she ventured a glance back at her she saw rejection and anger shining behind her eyes.

Kira sighed, and Dax turned to look out of the window so that she wouldn’t see the resentment in her eyes. “Are you sure you’re well enough to go wandering around by yourself?” she asked, refusing to voice the hurt they both knew she was feeling. “You don’t look good, Dax. And just a few minutes ago you could barely even sit up without help.”

Dax didn’t look back; she didn’t trust herself to keep from crumbling if she did. “I’m not planning on crossing the Janitza Mountains on foot,” she pointed out. “I just want to get some fresh air and try to clear my head a little. I’ll be right outside the whole time.”

Kira still didn’t looked convinced, but Bareil blessedly stopped her before she could throw out any further protestations. “She’s a strong and resourceful woman,” he said again, reminding them both. “And she can take care of herself. By the Prophets, Nerys, she survived on her own in a parallel universe for a week. Do you really think five minutes in the garden without a chaperone will do any lasting damage?”

“I suppose not,” Kira conceded sullenly.

“Exactly. So how about you and I take a step back and let her collect her thoughts in peace, hm?”

Kira glared. “If anything happens to her, I’m blaming you.”

“Fair enough,” he said with a chuckle, then turned back to Dax, flashing the proud smile of someone who had clawed their way to an impossible victory. “You’d better run, before she changes her mind.”

Dax did not need telling twice.

The gardens, she quickly discovered, were very beautiful. More flowers than she could count blooming in more colours than she could name, radiance dipped in perfume assaulting all her senses at once, but their gifts were wasted on her. She saw them, aglow with alien beauty, but it was beyond her meagre power to appreciate them. Though she peered and squinted, stopping to smell the honeyed perfume of the nearest blossoms, all she could see was a dull world steeped in grey. Everything was disjointed and hazy, and the heavy scent of the place just made her head spin. She was surrounded on all sides by life and vibrancy, but she felt like she was standing in a graveyard.

As she strolled through the luxuriant grounds, she realised that she didn’t even know where on Bajor they were. Was this Bareil’s home? The Vedek Assembly? Some quiet out-of-the-way cabin that Kira had rented for that damn pilgrimage of hers? Dax didn’t know the first thing about Bajor, and the realisation struck with much more force than it should have. She knew, deep down inside, that she shouldn’t care where she was, that it shouldn’t bother her at all, but somehow that didn’t help. It was a stupid, pointless little thing, but it drove her almost to the brink of panic again.

Where was she? Why didn’t she know? Why hadn’t they told her? She fell to her knees, right there in the middle of the path, and clutched her head. Why did she care?

Keiko would probably know the exact location just by the species of flowers, she thought, and the realisation shook her shoulders in a heaving sob. Keiko would be able to identify every stem, every leaf, every detail of every plant in this perfume-scented garden; she would be able to tell Dax everything anyone could ever want to know about any of them, and she could have told her where they were. She would know. She knew Bajor so much better than Dax did; she’d spent enough time down on the planet making botanical discoveries, and Dax felt another shuddering sob rip through her, salt staining her fingers when she brought them up to wipe the tears away. Keiko would have taught her everything about this place, but Dax could not learn.

She wasn’t sure how long she stayed there, on her knees in the middle of the gravel path, tears streaking her face as she stared up at the flowers looming over her from all sides, wishing she could make sense of their vibrant colours. It could have been a few minutes or a few hours, and she’d have no way of knowing. Like this place, time was something she did not understand just then.

However long it was, she was deep enough in thought that when a heavy hand dropped down onto her shoulder, the shock of it rasped painfully in her throat.

“Jadzia?”

She closed her eyes, blocked out the familiarity of the voice, the only thing in this place that was familiar. “Don’t call me that,” she managed, the words coming automatically by now.

“I’m sorry.” A delicate cough, subtle and polite. _Bareil_. “It’s just… well, ‘Jadzia’ is what Nerys always calls you. ‘Lieutenant Dax’ sounds so formal.”

Dax turned to face him, almost blinded by the sad smile on his earnest young face, peace radiating from his features. Honest features, she thought. Vedek’s features. Her own must have reflected a portrait of pain, because the instant Bareil saw it, his face fell. The meditative coolness that was such a staple in religious figures dissolved as though it had never been there at all, and the sympathy in his eyes deepened until they were dark enough to get lost in. He looked startled, almost frightened for her, and she wanted to take him by the collar and shake him for that, but she was too worn out to even stand.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked instead, exhausted and miserable. “Weren’t you the one telling Major Kira to leave me alone?”

He shrugged sheepishly. “I was. And I’m sorry about this too.” He sighed, heavy and long-suffering. “She was fretting, you see, and… well…” He sighed. “Nerys has a beautiful heart, but she’s not exactly the most diplomatic soul in the galaxy. Or the most patient.”

Dax almost laughed, but she caught herself before it could happen and the sound dissolved into a hitching whimper. “That’s an understatement,” she forced out, and stared down at the gravel.

Bareil chuckled politely. “Anyway. She wanted to check up on you, but I thought it would be better for all of us if I came out here instead. If you don’t mind my saying, you seemed a little uncomfortable with all the attention she was giving you…”

Dax nodded, swallowing hard. “It’s nothing personal,” she said again.

“I know. It’s perfectly understandable after everything you’ve been through. But you know Nerys. She takes everything so personally…” He spread his arms wide, knowing perfectly well that he didn’t need to say anything more. “So, if you don’t mind suffering with my company for a few minutes, I think we can both agree it’s a little more palatable than the alternative.”

“Thank you,” Dax said, and meant it.

“Don’t mention it.” He sounded almost apologetic, as though his insight was more of a burden than a blessing. “She’s really upset about you, you know.”

“I know.” Dax grimaced. “She has no reason to be.”

Bareil’s expression faltered, cracking a little at the edges. He didn’t believe her, but he was too kind-hearted to say so aloud. Instead, he opted for a conspiratorial wink, shaking his head as he leaned in, like he was readily buying all the crap she was trying to sell him, and Dax was just about desperate enough for someone to even pretend to believe her that she didn’t care.

“I know that,” he said, “and you know that. But we both know it’s not going to stop her. You’re her closest friend on that station, and you’ve just materialised unconscious on her bedroom floor after spending a week in a parallel universe. Can you blame her for wanting to make sure you’re all right after that?”

“I guess not,” Dax muttered, then offered him a sheepish half-shrug. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. Popping in unannounced while you were…” She coughed, delicately; in truth, she still wasn’t entirely sure that she had interrupted them mid-coitus after all, but she supposed it better to be unnecessarily diplomatic than embarrassed. “I really didn’t mean… if I’d thought you were… I mean, if I’d known… that is, I would have waited until you…” She trailed off, gesticulating helplessly.

Bareil laughed. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You couldn’t have known.” His expression sobered for a moment, thoughtful, and the ridges at his nose crinkled a little, like Kira’s did sometimes when she had something particularly heavy weighing on her mind. “It’s not what you think, you know. She really did come here to get in touch with herself. I was just…” He sighed. “She needed someone to take her mind off you.”

Dax closed her eyes for a moment. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. But it happened anyway.” His expression darkened for the first time in as long as she’d known him, if only for a moment. “I don’t think you can imagine how worried she was.”

That was true; Dax couldn’t imagine Kira being worried at all. Kira didn’t get worried, she got angry. She got aggressive and hyper-defensive and she blamed everyone else for bringing their troubles on themselves. She wasn’t the kind to sit around biting her nails and worrying; she was the kind to push her concerns aside and go about her business as before, to prove to herself that she had no emotional ties, that friendship was just something that came and went, that there was no point in investing in it.

Dax hadn’t given much thought to what she was leaving behind when she’d gone with Sisko, but she found herself frowning now, wondering how Kira must have felt to be left behind. She realised now, for the first time, what an awkward position she’d put her in, how heavy her shoulders must have been with the burden of being the only one to know where she was, the only one who could explain why she wasn’t coming back if the worst happened. That was a terrible thing to carry around, and a fresh wave of guilt crashed over her, self-hatred for her lack of foresight.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though she knew it wasn’t Bareil she should be saying it to. “I didn’t mean to leave her like that. I just… I had to…”

“I understand,” he said, in a voice that told her he didn’t but he knew that it wasn’t his place to understand anyway. “She called me as soon as she arrived on Bajor. She was so frustrated, so angry and… well, you know how she is when she’s helpless.”

 _Helpless._ Dax recoiled at the word. “Major Kira isn’t exactly the helpless type,” she murmured.

“Not usually,” Bareil conceded readily. “But you left her in quite a difficult position.” His eyes turned dark for a moment. “Do you have any idea what it would have done to her if you’d died over there?”

Dax felt another sob bubbling in her chest. “But I didn’t,” she said again, forcing it down. “I didn’t die. And Major Kira—”

“Nerys,” Bareil corrected.

“She knows me better than that,” Dax finished, biting her lip. “She should’ve trusted me. She should… she should’ve had _faith_ in me.”

“She does.” He touched her face, then sighed as she pulled away, shuffling back and wrapping her arms around her midsection. “You can’t imagine the faith she has in you.” He sounded almost resentful, voice touched for the first time with something less than pure. “But that doesn’t mean she didn’t worry, and it doesn’t mean she wasn’t afraid.”

“She had no reason to be,” Dax muttered, and hugged the symbiont as hard as she could.

“Maybe not,” Bareil conceded. “But wouldn’t you have been worried too, in her place?”

Dax couldn’t argue with that, so she responded instead with a moody scowl. “Maybe,” she huffed. “But she’s not doing me… she’s not doing either of us any good by suffocating me like this. It’s hard enough to breathe in this place already, without…”

She trailed off, unable to say it. Major Kira. Nerys. The Intendant. Who was who? How could she tell them apart when they all looked the same? Which one was she supposed to care about? Which one had done terrible things to her? She remembered her fingers around a slender throat, bruises staining Bajoran skin, remembered gasps of pleasure and whimpers of pain. She remembered long thin fingers driving deep inside her, remembered slick heat and rising passion, remembered coming undone and coming apart and _coming_ … and she remembered whispering _“Nerys”_ as she did.

Bareil coughed, bringing her back to the present, and Dax trembled under his scrutiny.

“Listen…” he said, sounding oddly discomfited. “Ah… I know we’re not exactly friends, at least not in any meaningful sense… but… well, Nerys has told me a little about the universe you were in, and, uh…” It was strange to see the composed and controlled vedek struggling so much with words, and Dax didn’t know whether it was unnerving or endearing. “Look. We both know how protective Nerys can be. And I think we both know that’s probably the last thing you need right now. So, well… if you need someone to talk to, maybe someone you don’t feel quite as connected to…”

Dax shuddered. _‘Connected’_ , she thought, caught between amusement and nausea. _If only he knew…_

Still, she mustered a smile, surprised by how easily it came to her. It felt strange, smiling so naturally at him when it hurt to even think of smiling at Kira. Bareil was far more of an acquaintance than an outright friend, and she supposed that lightened the burden of needing to appear strong and brave. She had no personal feelings for him, really, notwithstanding the joy she felt in seeing how happy he made Kira, and it didn’t weigh as heavily on her shoulders to keep up her facade in front of him. What did it matter if Bareil saw the cracks in her armour? Once she left this place, it would probably be weeks at least before she saw him again.

It was more than just that, though. Bareil’s face was one of the few from this side that she hadn’t seen on the other, and it brought its own kind of relief to look at someone who had no place in that universe. It was comforting to look at him and not see anything that would catapult her back there. He hadn’t been a slave, hadn’t been an overseer, hadn’t been there at all so far as she’d known, and it struck her like a blow to the gut to smile up at him now and realise that it was easier to share space with him than with Kira. It felt like another betrayal, another abuse of Kira’s boundless faith, and she wanted to feel bad, but there was no room left in her for more guilt.

Sensing her discomfiture, Bareil took her hand. Dax flinched a little at the contact, but his hands were just as unfamiliar as the rest of him, and they didn’t bring any memories. They were strong and solid and utterly masculine, nothing like the Intendant’s, or even Jadzia’s. They were something entirely different, separate, and that made her feel almost safe. Well, safer than she’d felt in a long time, anyway, and in spite of herself she felt her body relax a little as she gazed down at the ruddy strength of his fingers, the lines on his palm. Strong, solid, masculine. Strong, solid… and nothing like Kira.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he murmured softly, voice low and kind, like he was talking to a traumatised child.

“I’m not ashamed,” she lied.

Bareil smiled, sensing the dishonesty as he always seemed to. “Well, if you were,” he pressed with his trademark diplomacy. “There’s no reason to be. Sometimes it’s just easier to talk about things like this with someone a little more objective.” He squeezed her hand, firm but gentle, then drew back. “I admit, I’m not familiar with how the Trill deal with grief or pain… but the Bajoran people often find great solace in sharing their burdens with us.”

He was talking about the vedeks, she realised, and supposed it made a kind of sense. The Bajorans were a deeply spiritual people, and their lives had deep roots in their religion. Truth be told, it made Dax a little uncomfortable, but faith was so important to Kira that she had learned to accept, if not understand, it. It made sense that such a religious people would find the greatest comfort in their spiritual leaders, and Dax wished it was so simple for her.

She didn’t believe in the Prophets. Even knowing that they existed in the wormhole, she kept closely to her ideals of ‘aliens’ and ‘life forms’, anything to pin a label on it, anything to give it a definition grounded in fact. But where Dax saw life forms, Kira saw gods, and she knew the same was true of Bareil. The Prophets were vast resources of faith and strength for the Bajoran people, and Dax had lived long enough and seen enough struggles to know that those were rare and precious things; she might not share them, might not even understand them, but she would never deny a people’s right to inner peace.

“It’s not really like that on Trill,” she said aloud. “The closest thing to a spiritual experience I’ve ever had was in the symbiont pools…” She cut herself off, feeling the sting of Joran’s memories. “And that wasn’t exactly peaceful.”

Bareil nodded thoughtfully. “The Prophets offer themselves to any soul in need,” he said. “Even the most despairing creatures can take some comfort in knowing that the Prophets are listening, and that they share their struggles.”

“I don’t think the Prophets care about me.” Dax chose her words very carefully; it was the kindest way she could think of to say _‘I’m a scientist, and I don’t believe in this nonsense’_. “And even if they did, I’m not sure… honestly, I don’t think I deserve their sympathy anyway. They should save it for someone who does.”

When she summoned the courage to look back up at him, he was frowning again, eyes dark with a concern that mirrored just a little too closely the worry she’d seen in Kira’s eyes before.

“What makes you say that?” he asked. “The Prophets have room in their hearts for everyone, Bajoran or otherwise. You don’t have to be one of us to let them comfort you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dax blurted out before she could stop herself.

Bareil’s frown deepened. He didn’t push her to explain herself, though, and that surprised her. It shouldn’t have, really; religious figures were renowned for their patience, after all, and Bareil was by far one of the most patient men she’d ever met. He could have given even Audrid a run for her money in that respect, and that was really saying something. Still, though, there was a quiet kind of earnestness in the way he looked at her, the typical intensity of spiritual leaders who seemed to bore right into the soul, and Dax found herself inexplicably compelled to keep talking anyway.

“They’re not my gods,” she explained weakly. “They’re yours. They’re yours, and they’re Ne— Major Kira’s, and it… it doesn’t feel right for me to lean on their shoulders and ask them for…” 

She trailed off, feeling the word rend her heart, but Bareil wouldn’t let her hide from it. “Understanding?” he pressed gently. “Empathy?”

Dax turned her face away; she couldn’t bear the sight of him, so kind and compassionate when that was the last thing she deserved. “ _Forgiveness_ ,” she whispered, wretched and damned.

She expected him to rear back and cry out, to validate her in the way all religious types did. She expected an outpouring of _‘you don’t need forgiveness’_ or _‘you’re a good soul’_ , or any one of a thousand other hollow placations that would hurt far more than they helped. They came so easily to him, and even to Kira, the idea that the Prophets loved all souls equally, and she expected him to play up that angle, to drive their love into her, to do what Kira would have tried to do. She expected him to try and convince her that she was being too hard on herself, that even if he didn’t know her as well as Kira he still knew that she was incapable of being unforgivable.

He didn’t, though. As easy as it would have been to fall back on all of that, he simply sighed again, soft and sorrowful, and leaned forward to steady himself against the gravel.

“I see.”

Dax mustered a humourless little laugh, not kind but not really antagonistic either. “How very spiritual of you,” she quipped.

“Jadzia.” He ignored the way she flinched at the name, and didn’t give her a chance to tell him again not to say it. “Nerys tells me you went over there with the best and the purest of intentions. You can’t be faulted for that. Whatever happened, know that you meant well, and that your heart was good. You just wanted to help your—”

“—self?” Dax finished for him, relishing the irony.

“Counterpart,” Bareil corrected in that formal vedek’s voice of his. “A lost soul in need. You went to help.”

“I know why I went,” Dax snapped; she wasn’t really angry at him for pointing out the obvious, but he made an easy target. “I don’t need you to tell me.”

Bareil sighed again. Dax could feel the frustration radiating out of him, and she felt just a little proud of it; there was an obnoxious sense of accomplishment in getting a man as patient as Vedek Bareil to show even a hint of aggravation. It wasn’t enough to chase him away, though, and she sighed too as he studied her once again. She wanted him to leave her alone, to let her collect her thoughts and clear her mind on her own, but it seemed that he was just as stubborn about that as Kira. However loudly he’d claimed to understand her need for solitude, he didn’t seem particularly eager to let her get back to it now that he was here.

Well, she thought moodily, if he wanted to stand around hammering at her walls, let him. He could speak as softly as he liked; she wouldn’t share anything with him. He had no right to know what had happened on the other side, and even if he did, she had no intention of telling him. Whatever she might feel about his offers of solace and sympathy, she couldn’t quite face the thought of watching his expression harden, replaced with horror and disgust as he learned about what she’d done. She may not really believe in his beloved Prophets, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t sting to watch as even they turned away from her.

“You’re right,” Bareil said after a moment, ever the diplomat. “You don’t need me to tell you what’s best for you, and it’s not my place to try. You’re the only one who really knows what you’ve been through, and it’s not for me or Nerys or anyone else to tell you how best to work through it. You’re older than both of us put together, and your combined experiences must make ours seem small and insignificant. It’s not our place to try and give you advice, and I’m sorry.”

Dax hated that. She hated how earnest he was, how sincere and quick to apologise, how he rolled over and yielded to her in the very same moment that he refused to do what she wanted. What good were his tender apologies or his heartfelt honesty, when all she really wanted was for him to get up and leave, or else have the bare-faced decency to challenge her properly? She didn’t want soft-spoken reassurances or kind-hearted spirituality; she wanted someone to try and drag the confessions out of her, someone who would force their sympathies on her until she choked on them, until she lost herself and tried to choke them right back. All of this spiritual softness wasn’t what she’d expected, and it wasn’t what she wanted.

It made things difficult. It complicated the mess inside her head, and she couldn’t afford that. Looking at Bareil now, seeing how eager he was to apologise even when he hadn’t really done anything wrong, made it so tempting to take his offered shoulder and cry on it until her tears ran dry. It was so tempting to heed his promises of objectivity, of a soul she had no connection with, of someone who could hear without knowing. She didn’t want that, and it hurt to think about it, to see how open his expression was, how genuine his willingness to take her burdens on himself and be to her all the things he seemed to know by instinct that Kira could not.

“You must be a very good vedek,” she said, a little more belligerently than he deserved. “I don’t know how you can be so patient, or apologise so easily.”

That must have been exactly what he wanted to hear, because all the frustration washed off him as she said it, dissipating as though it had never been there at all. It annoyed her that he could be so easily vindicated, that it took so little to placate him. His fingers twitched a little where they still braced against the gravel, keeping his balance as he crouched, and she could tell that he wanted to reach out and take her hands, but experience and wisdom kept him from actually doing so. That annoyed her too, how easily he learned, how effortlessly he seemed to figure out the best way of dealing with someone as volatile and unreasonable as she was. It infuriated her. Didn’t he ever falter?

“You’ve been around for more than three hundred years,” he observed. “I’m sure you’ve you’ve picked up a little patience, yourself.”

“A little,” Dax admitted, thinking of Audrid’s children and Tobin’s engines. “But it’s different with you. You’re so…”

She tried not to use the word ‘young’ very often, because the Trill definition of the word was so completely different to every other species, but next to the other vedeks she’d seen, it seemed to fit Bareil in more than just his lack of lifetimes. He really was young, in every sense of the word, and Dax suspected that even his own people sometimes blinked and looked at him twice, surprised by the depth of wisdom in a man who had so much life ahead of him, and yet so little behind.

“You still have so much to learn,” she said aloud, after a moment’s deliberation. “Even by Bajoran standards, you’ve barely lived at all. How can you be so patient? How can you be so giving of yourself?”

“I’ve been a Bajoran all my life,” he said simply. “Maybe I’ve not lived as long as, say, Kai Winn, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not lived. The occupation aged us all more quickly than any of us would’ve liked.” His eyes grew misty, distant, and Dax wondered if he was thinking, like she was, of a younger Kira Nerys, less weather-beaten and more innocent. “I’ve seen all sorts of pain, from all sorts of places, and you don’t need to be a spiritual leader to understand where that pain comes from or how it works. The causes may be very different, Lieutenant Dax, but the effects are often the same.”

Dax swallowed, shaking her head. Being reminded of the occupation was like a lash at her back, branding her own hurts and making her feel even more pointless and petty than she already did. “I’m sorry,” she mustered for the thousandth time.

“Don’t be sorry. Be thankful.” His tone was light, but his face had hardened. “I have seen survivors of terrible things tear themselves apart with guilt because they lived and their loved ones died. I’ve had to offer counsel to friends and strangers alike, people who have lost everything and people who never had anything to lose. I’ve seen all kinds of suffering from every corner of Bajor. After everything they’ve been through, a little patience is the least I can offer them.”

“I’m not Bajoran,” Dax said, as much to herself as to him, a broken reminder to them both that she did not belong here. “I’ve never lived under an occupation. And I haven’t lost anything.”

“Perhaps not,” Bareil conceded with a sad, knowing smile. “But you are in pain.”

That struck a nerve, and Dax was too shaken to even try to conceal it. She swore under her breath and swung to her feet, wheeling away from him and storming back towards the house.

“You don’t know the first thing about me.” She knew it was unfair but she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t stem the tide of words pouring unchecked out of her. “You don’t know who I am or where I’ve been. I don’t need you and I don’t need your damn Prophets. I don’t need anything. So leave me alone and go back to your precious Nerys.”

Her voice broke on the last word, and the rest of her broke with it, legs turning to gelatine beneath her. She swayed in place, refusing to go down, but knowing that she couldn’t turn back, couldn’t face him, couldn’t look into those spiritual vedek’s eyes, those eyes so full of empathy and religion, so full of faith, so full of all the things Kira had offered her, all the things that had once held her world together.

It was one thing to vent at a man she barely knew, to throw all her vitriol and violence at him because he was cutting too close to the bone, because he was there, a willing and easy target. It was one thing to yell at him, knowing that he’d take it, but it was another thing entirely to say Kira’s name aloud, to remember why they were both here, to remember her face and her voice and the touch of her hand, to remember thin fingers and hoarse moans, choking and gasping and begging, to remember Kira, to remember the Intendant, to remember them both, neither of them, all of them, to remember—

“Jadzia.”

“Don’t.” The word was a moan. “Don’t call me that, and don’t pretend to understand. You don’t know anything. You don’t know me, and you don’t know… you don’t know…”

“That’s right,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear him.

All of a sudden, his hands were on her shoulders, and she was frozen in place. She stood there, helpless and hopeless, halfway back towards the house but trapped in his grip like a fly in a spider-web. His touch was strong but gentle, just like he was, offering support but never trying to force it on her, not really keeping her there, just holding her steady as she wavered. She wanted to shrug off his hands and his compassion, shrug off his presence and keep going, but there was a kind of promise in the way he touched her, a murmur of something she couldn’t place, something sweet and beautiful, heady as the perfume of the flowers all around them and just as colourful, and her innate Trill curiosity couldn’t break away without seeing what it was.

“I don’t know anything about you,” he went on, so soft that she had to strain to hear it, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d turned back to face him, eyes wide and stinging with salt as she looked into his kind eyes. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know what you’ve been through. I don’t know anything about you, just like you said.” He took a step back, and Dax found herself following him. “And that means I can’t understand. It means I won’t ever be able to understand.”

Dax heard him, and she knew what he was trying to say.

She remembered Kira, back before all this started. Kira, who knew from her own experience how it felt to wage a war inside herself, to take up arms against her own soul, to carve out pieces of herself so that other pieces might be spared the infection. Kira, who had told her that she would rise above what she was now and become something new, something more, something better. Kira, who had so much faith in her, and in everything. Kira, who understood. Kira, who knew.

Kira, who knew the Intendant as well, who had also been to that dark and despairing universe, who had seen the things Dax had seen, who knew them all too well.

Kira understood. She couldn’t possibly understand everything, of course, but Dax could see her reaction now, as clear as daylight on the screen of her mind’s eye. She could see her eyes shine with tears, see the tightening of her jaw, hear the tremors in her voice when she told her what she had done and why. She could see it all. She could see the moment when she broke down and told her everything (because nobody could carry all of this forever, not even Dax), when she lost herself and sobbed out all of her terrible deeds, all the things she’d felt, when she drowned in the flood of everything she’d been through, everything she’d done. She could see it all, and she knew that Kira would understand. She would understand, just as she always understood, and Dax would not survive that.

Standing in front of her now, however, Bareil offered something different, something safe. He offered her someone who did not understand, someone who could never understand, someone who wouldn’t pretend to understand, perhaps someone who didn’t want to understand. Bareil didn’t offer her empathy in the truest sense, the strong-hearted words of someone who knew, who had experienced, who had been the worst things Dax had seen in herself; he wasn’t offering her any of that. He was offering her his body, his shoulder to lean on and his ears to hear her, his spirituality and his empathy, but not his understanding. He was offering his silence. And in that moment, with her head full of Nerys, Dax found that utterly irresistible.

“I can’t look at her.”

The confession cut its way out of her, tearing free from her throat before she could stop it, and it was only once the words were out of her that she realised she wanted them there. She wanted him to hear it, wanted _someone_ to hear it. Bareil smiled, as reverent as Kira had ever looked, as though she’d given him a pure and beautiful gift.

“I see,” he said, and that was enough.

Dax closed her eyes against the ache in her jaw. “I can’t even look at her. Do you know what that’s like? She’s one of my closest friends. She means so much to me, and I can’t even look at her.” Her breath hitched, voice catching, but she would not stop now. “I know she’s not… I know it’s not the same. I know I’m back, I’m home, I’m out of there. I know I don’t ever have to think about that awful place again. I know all that. But I can’t look at her without…” She looked away, feeling awful. “I can’t even look at her.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Bareil said, but his voice was tinted with sadness, pain on behalf of them both. “Nerys is your friend, Jadzia. She’ll—”

“Don’t tell me she’ll understand,” Dax blurted out, pleading. “Please. Whatever you do, don’t tell me that. I don’t want that. I don’t want her to understand.” She met his gaze, square and sober. “I want her to hate me.”

For the first time, Bareil seemed truly thrown. “Why?” he asked.

She turned away, back towards the house, but she didn’t move towards it. “I don’t want to be forgiven,” she confessed, the words catching like serrations in her throat. “Not by the Prophets. Not by you. And definitely not by her.” She wanted to leave it at that, but his hand was still so heavy on her shoulder, a silent invitation for her to keep going. And so, because he was not Kira, because he was not Nerys, she did. “I don’t want her to understand what happened over there. I don’t want her to understand the things I did or the things I felt. I don’t want her to understand the choices and the mistakes I made. I don’t want her to understand any of it. I don’t want her to understand, and I don’t want her to forgive me.”

Bareil didn’t say anything. He just let his hand drop from her shoulder, sliding down to rest at the small of her back, the barest hint of pressure as he stroked in a soothing arc over the curve of her spine. There was no suggestion in the contact; there was nothing there at all, only what she chose to take from it, no sympathy and no solace, and if there was any sorrow in him, he kept it carefully out of his touch. He just let the flat of his palm glide across her skin, comforting her if she wanted it to or simply existing if she didn’t.

“I want her to hate me,” she whispered again. “I want her to feel sick at the sight of me. I want her to hate me like I… like I…”

But she couldn’t finish. She could barely even breathe, and the only thing that kept her from falling to her knees all over again was that damn hand at the small of her back. Bareil’s hand, strong and solid and unlike anything she’d felt there for a very long time.

The unfamiliarity felt good, but something in it felt wrong as well, and Dax shivered as she tried to reconcile the two feelings. Bareil was a good soul, and he knew what to do, how to exude an air of calm that Dax couldn’t help breathing in; his presence was a balm to the conflicts within her, and it was almost a natural reflex for her to lean into his touch, to be enthralled by promises of a simple shoulder that couldn’t understand. It was so easy to fall into what he offered, and yet something in her still resisted.

She knew what that something was, of course: the Kira connection. He was still her lover, wasn’t he? He was still hers, and she was his, and as hard as Dax tried to block the fact out of her mind, she just couldn’t do it. That hand still stroking across her back belonged to Kira too, and suddenly the sensation made Dax feel ill. Every part of him was a part of her, a part of Nerys, and suddenly that strong solid contact wasn’t so unfamiliar after all.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter that he couldn’t understand. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to understand, that he had no way of understanding. None of it mattered, because she suddenly she couldn’t look at him any more than she could look at Kira. Suddenly, it was enough that he reminded her of Kira, enough that he made her think of her, enough that she existed in both of their lives. It was enough to know that the hands that had been so soothing a moment ago had done so much more than soothe Kira’s skin, enough to know that the sweet spirituality pouring from his lips had poured into her mouth as well. It was enough to turn around and look at him, and see all the places that Kira had marked.

Were there bruises under his shirt?, she wondered. Did she leave shallow little cuts across his ribs? Did she make him take her by the throat when she took him inside her?

“I can’t do this,” she said aloud, choking on the words, on the thoughts, on everything. “I can’t talk to you like this. I can’t talk to you, knowing what you mean to her, what she means to you, what you mean to each other. I can’t talk to you about the other side, what I went through, what I saw and what I did, and how it made me feel… how it made me…” She shook her head, trembling all over; she thought for a moment that she might pass out, but the Prophets were not so merciful. “I can’t talk to you. I’m sorry, Bareil. I can’t.”

She met his eyes, not because she wanted to see him, but because she wanted him to see her. She wanted him to see the desperation in her, the pain and the guilt, all the things she couldn’t say, how deep they ran and how much they hurt. She wanted him to use that vedek’s intuition of his, the patience that belied his youth, to see into every last corner of her. She wanted him to see her hateful heart, to hear her calling _“Nerys”_ as the Intendant made her come. She wanted him to see and hear and know everything, even if he could never understand. If he knew, then maybe he wouldn’t forgive her either.

But he didn’t. He didn’t see, didn’t hear, and he didn’t know. His expression didn’t change at all, and the flicker of comprehension she’d hoped for never came. He gave no sign of recognition at all, and as she wrung her hands in despair, she wondered if vedeks were simply unable to see anything beyond the good in people, if hope and faith were the limits of their insight. Those things had no place in a universe as dark as the one Dax had come from; they had no place inside her at all, and maybe that was why he couldn’t see her for what she truly was. She was barren inside, and the things he thought he saw in her had long since withered.

At last, he cleared his throat, a half-formed syllable dying on his lips, aborted before he could get it out. Maybe that was the only real difference between vedeks and ex-terrorists, Dax thought: vedeks had the self-control to stop themselves before they put their foot in their mouths.

“I see,” he said after a moment, sticking to the casual indifference that worked so well for her before, cautious but not at all offended. “I’m sorry this is so difficult for you.”

Dax bristled, not liking that implication one bit. “It’s not difficult,” she insisted, though they both knew it was a lie. “It’s not… it’s not anything, really. All I need is some fresh air and some space to clear my head. I don’t need spiritual guidance from the Prophets. I don’t need a shoulder to cry on. All I need is a little room to breathe. Is that so much to ask for?”

“Not at all,” Bareil said quietly. “I’ll tell Nerys to leave you alone for as long as you like.”

Dax almost laughed at that, how easily he made light of his presence here, turning the blame back on Kira. She may have been the reason he’d come, but Dax knew that he’d stayed because he thought he might be able to break through to her himself. It had been a noble effort, even she had to admit, but ultimately futile, and it didn’t surprise her in the least to see him turning around now to diffuse the responsibility. Didn’t anyone accept the blame for their own failures any more? Was Dax the only one to bear the weight of her sins? Maybe that was why they were so heavy…

“You do that,” she said aloud, and tried not to cry.

Bareil sighed, seeming to sense that he couldn’t get away so easily. “Look,” he pressed gently. “I know it’s a lot to adjust to. I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through, and if you want me to find you somewhere a little quieter to stay, I can do that. You’re more than welcome to stay here, of course, but if you need your space… well, these robes aren’t just for show, you know. I could pull some strings and find you a place close by. Somewhere solitary, even completely isolated, if that’s what you think you need.” He let his hand linger at her back for just a moment more, then drew back. “Whatever you want.”

It was a generous offer, and a wholly unexpected one. Truth be told, Dax hadn’t even thought about where she’d be staying, or how long for. There was so much bearing down on her mind, so much that she didn’t want to think about, there wasn’t any room for the things she needed to. Where did she want to stay? What did she want to do? Did she really want to be completely alone? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything.

She could tell from the look on his face that he was strongly hoping she’d opt to stay with him and Kira; though he’d made it clear that he would give her as much space as she wanted, he was evidently worried about her, and she suspected he secretly agreed with Kira’s insistences that she shouldn’t be left alone for too long. No doubt they both thought she’d collapse again the moment she tried to exert herself, and though Dax wanted very much to prove them wrong, a part of her could’t deny that it felt the same concern.

It touched her all the more, then, to see the honesty in his eyes, the earnest desire to help, to do whatever she felt she needed whether or not it really was for the best. If she did ask for a place all her own, she could tell that he wouldn’t try to change her mind. He would respect her decision, even if he did not agree with it, and it was that willingness to bend his wishes to hers that made the choice for her.

“I’ll stay here,” she conceded quietly. “If you’ll have me.”

Bareil smiled. “Nerys would never forgive me if I didn’t.”


	33. Chapter 33

There was an unexpected tranquillity to Bajor.

Gazing out through the full-length window of her borrowed bedroom, staring blindly down at the gardens below and the wider world beyond, it was hard for Dax to imagine that the people of this deceptively peaceful-looking planet were still recovering from an occupation. From up here in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by beauty and quiet, it was impossible to see any mark of the Cardassians at all.

It really was beautiful. The sun was high, bright and hot, streaming in through the window and warming the skin on Dax’s face, soothing the bruises on her arms, the cuts on her hands, wrapping her up and keeping her safe. The grounds below, wide and expansive, were teeming with vibrancy, trees and flowers and shrubbery, alive and breathing with exotic beauty. Everywhere she looked, she saw life, a constant and colourful reminder that it was still possible to thrive even after terrible trauma. It should have been deeply comforting, and Dax knew that she should feel right at home. She should be embracing the world around her, embracing Bajor completely. She should be losing herself in the world she was seeing, this impossible world that had defied so much pain.

She wasn’t, though. Though the sun was rich and warm, though it painted over the ache on her skin, it couldn’t push deeper, couldn’t penetrate to the symbiont within, and Dax’s insides still felt cold and dark. The sea of flowers blossoming below just made her think of Keiko, her eagerness and her love of the botanical splendours this planet had to offer. Besides, as beautiful as it was, she couldn’t forget that it was still Bajor, that it was Kira’s home, and that Kira herself was right there in the room next door.

Occasionally, she and Bareil would talk to each other, murmuring in hushed voices, and Dax wished the walls were thicker because it was impossible not to hear it all. Kira was worried, Kira was angry, Kira was upset, Kira was frustrated. Kira was a hundred things all at once, and all because of Dax, but Bareil was only patient. They complemented each other well, Dax thought, turning away from the window and trying to block out the clashing of their voices. Kira was so fierce, so passionate, so on fire; she wanted so much to do something, to do anything at all so long as she was taking action, but Bareil knew better than to let her.

Kira was a terrorist; action was all she knew. But Bareil was a spiritual soul, a religious leader, and he was a paragon of patience right where Kira needed it most. He tempered her passion, calmed her like the sunlight tried so hard to calm Dax, only with Kira he was successful. He grounded her and supported her, understood how hard it was for her, that she was not as patient as he was, that she couldn’t bear to be so passive. He was so good for her, so completely what she needed, and Dax fell to her knees, overwhelmed as she wondered if a man like Bareil would have made something different of the Intendant.

It was because of him, she knew, that they left her alone. She knew how thoroughly it was breaking Kira’s heart, yet still she managed to hold her tongue, to keep a respectful distance, to stand back and wait for Dax to come out of herself and come to her. She let Dax keep her distance, and she didn’t try to invade her personal space unless she was explicitly invited. She must have realised that Dax was far from healthy, that she was hiding, perhaps even that she was punishing herself, but still she did not push or try to impose her presence. It was more than Dax could have hoped for, but still she wished the walls were thick enough that she didn’t have to hear just how deeply that distance hurt.

There was no sonic shower in the house, only a run-down old thing that used running water, but Dax didn’t particularly care; she had no intention of using it anyway. She didn’t want to wash, didn’t want to go through the motions, to smile and stand up straight and pretend that she was clean just because she smelled a little better. Just thinking of it made her feel strange, sick and scared and close to panicking again. Panic was always so close in this place, it seemed, and it felt even more peculiar after the hollowed-out numbness that had hit so hard after Terok Nor. She thought of running water and her breath hitched, thought of cleanliness and her throat closed up, and in the end she gave up trying to think at all, wrapping her arms around her midsection and huddling on the floor, rocking herself and the symbiont until the feeling passed.

The grime and dirt that clung to her, the last revenants of that place, felt like a kind of prison, like a shackle she wasn’t ready to shrug off. She felt unclean, in a way that couldn’t be washed, like her soul was dirty, like her insides were tainted and no amount of soap could reach that deep. She hadn’t showered in days, not since the second morning she’d spent in the Intendant’s quarters, and she knew that she should want nothing more than to dive into that primitive Bajoran shower and scrub off the dirt of that place, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to make herself all pretty and clean on the outside when inside she was blackened and soiled with the filth and sweat and blood of that twisted universe. She didn’t want to pretend to be clean when she wasn’t, and so she didn’t.

She didn’t eat, either. She joined Kira and Bareil for their afternoon meal, but didn’t take anything they offered. Bareil ate modesty, Kira somewhat less so, but even she was guarded here. Dax could tell that she wanted to press her into eating something, but she held her tongue because Bareil had told her to. Grateful, Dax said nothing, folding her hands neatly in her lap and staring down at them. It was easier to watch the flutter of her fingers than the tension in Kira’s jaw as she chewed or the way that Bareil touched her shoulder every time she swallowed. They were looking at her, she knew, and that was all the more reason not to look at them.

There was a gnawing in her stomach, hunger or nervousness or perhaps some combination of the two, but still she couldn’t bring herself to partake of even the simple Bajoran fare on offer. It made her feel uneasy, breath coming short and shallow, edging into panic just like it did when she thought of taking a shower. Besides, even if she had found the strength to eat, the idea of indulging herself and enjoying a hearty meal with those twin pairs of Bajoran eyes staring at her from across the table, Kira’s hardened with hope and Bareil’s softened by sympathy, culled her appetite completely. So instead she just stared down at her hands, twisting them over and over in her lap, and blocked out Bareil’s futile feints at small-talk by listening to the clatter of silverware.

When she wasn’t chewing pieces of moba fruit, Kira chewed on her lip instead; it was just like her to make a competition out of this, to make it into a battle, and the part of Dax that still felt like herself couldn’t hide its amusement at the white-knuckle tension in her hands as she reached for another chunk of fruit, or the clipped edge that struck her voice when she replied to one of Bareil’s casual questions.

When they were finished, Dax volunteered to help clear the table. Her voice was rusty from lack of use, and the offer came out hoarse and hopeless, more a plea than a suggestion. Bareil, tactful as ever, acknowledged with a appreciative little half-smile, and voiced his enthusiasm as she helped to stack up the plates. He knew better than to say anything to her in front of Kira, but as soon as they were out of reach, he let the amicable facade slip just a little, and Dax sighed as his expression faded into something a little sadder.

“Starving yourself won’t do any good,” he remarked, quietly sober but without any judgement.

“I’m not starving myself,” Dax said. “I’m just… not partial to Bajoran cuisine.”

He quirked a brow at that. “That’s the argument you’re going with?” Still there was no accusation in his tone, and that irked her. “Come, now. I’m not Nerys.”

Dax sighed. “What do you want me to say?” she asked. “I’m not hungry. And even if I was, being here doesn’t exactly make it easy. You and Major Kira… you’re so…”

She couldn’t finish, but that didn’t seem to bother him. “Would you rather eat alone?” he offered, flashing her another sickeningly sympathetic smile. “You could take something back to your room, if you like.”

“No, thank you.” She clenched her jaw until it hurt. “I think I’m capable of deciding when I need to eat.”

“Fair enough.” He shrugged, and went back to clearing away the plates. “But I hope you decide it sooner rather than later. Going without food won’t change what you’re feeling, and it won’t make it any easier to look at her. It’ll only weaken your body, and that’s the last thing you or your symbiont need.” He at least had the decency to look a little self-deprecating as he said it, seeming to realise how presumptuous it must sound. “Not that I’d ever claim to be an expert in Trill physiology, of course,” he added quickly, “and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you to ‘keep your strength up’…”

“I don’t,” she said, and wished that she could sound angry.

“Of course you don’t.” His smile turned mischievous, or as close to it as he was capable of. “But I wouldn’t be much of a host if I didn’t say it anyway.”

Dax couldn’t help smiling at that, genuinely grateful for the attempt to lighten the moment; that was how she functioned best, and he seemed to have understood that about her by pure instinct, always taking an extra step to soften the blow of his cloying sympathy, injecting his offers of comfort with humour and banter, just like Benjamin would have. It seemed that he knew her far better than she’d been led to believe, because it felt like he was appealing to the deepest part of her, the part of her that was fundamentally Dax, light-hearted and willing to overlook almost anything so long as it came with a decent punchline. But then, she supposed, maybe that was just a part of being a vedek, knowing the right way to spin his words, the best way to make an impact on any kind of audience.

Either way, it had the desired effect, and what meagre ghost of aggression she might have entered the conversation with had well and truly dissipated by the time she spoke again. “I’ll eat something later,” she assured him, and mustered another shaky smile; it wasn’t much of one, but if the look on his face was anything to go by, it meant the world to him. “I promise.”

“That’s all I ask,” he said.

He brushed her shoulder as he passed, a lingering moment of compassion that Dax didn’t have the heart to shrug off, then smiled and left her alone.

She went back to her borrowed room and spent the rest of the afternoon staring out of the same window and down at the same panoramic view, wishing that she could lose herself to the blossoming of life instead of letting it remind her of death and destruction. Bajor was so beautiful, a testament to the survival and endurance of its people; it had suffered enough death and destruction of its own without Dax adding to it with her self-involved little dramas. She felt guilty, ashamed of herself; she knew that she ought to be drawing strength from the view, from the planet, from everything around her, but as hard as she tried, she just felt helpless and upset and guilty beyond measure.

Keiko O’Brien was alive, she told herself. She was alive and well and safe with her husband back on Deep Space Nine. She said it over and over and over again inside her head, repeating it _ad infinitum_ until the words lost their meaning and she found herself right back where she started. Keiko O’Brien was alive. She was alive.

When Kira took her back to the station after they were done here, she would be composed and calm, every inch the dashing young lieutenant everyone there knew and loved. She would show no trace of what had happened, where she’d been and what she’d done, and by necessity she would go about her business like nothing had happened at all. Just a vacation, just a pilgrimage, just a trip to Bajor.

When she got back, she decided, she would go to the O’Briens’ quarters, find Keiko, and ask her everything she knew about Bajoran botany. She would sit down, drink some sweet ginseng tea, and listen for hours as Keiko talked her through the flowers, the ecosystems, the plant life, which species thrived where and why, every last little detail. She would absorb everything, hang on every last word like it was a matter of life and death. She would listen and she would learn… and maybe, by the time they were done, she would finally allow herself to believe that Keiko really was alive.

Until that happened, though, she could only ache. She ached to look down and see so much life flourishing, to see a world come alive in the face of so much adversity. She ached right down to her soul to see and know and understand what Bajor had been through and not feel awed by the sight of it. Though she wasn’t Bajoran, it still felt like ingratitude, like she didn’t deserve to drink in the beauty and the strength of this place, like she couldn’t even see something as sacred as this without twisting it into something worthless, like not even the landmark of a whole species’ survival was free from the tainted creature inside her, like she could corrupt even beautiful Bajor if she looked at it for long enough.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked the empty room. “This isn’t your home. These aren’t your people. This place has nothing to do with you, so why are you trying to ruin it? Why can’t you just appreciate it for what it is? Why can’t you just be grateful?”

She didn’t know, and that just made it even worse. The whole thing was a vicious cycle of guilt, of pain turned to shame turned back to pain, and she hated that too. She felt trapped, like she didn’t belong here but at the same time she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Once or twice, she thought of seeking out Kira, of suggesting that she just go back to the runabout they’d set out in, and wait there by herself until they were ready to go back to Deep Space Nine. It would be peaceful there, quiet and blessedly solitary with no well-meaning vedek and no paper-thin walls, nothing at all but vast empty space. No Bareil, no Kira, no moba fruit, and no Bajoran beauty to feed her inner turmoil. But then, she knew that it would be terribly lonely up there, and as resistant as she was to company just then Dax was also sufficiently self-aware to know that loneliness was something she should not indulge.

That was a strange feeling too, being alone but not alone completely, of avoiding the company of people she cared about but couldn’t bear to see while still knowing they were there if she needed them. How would passionate Kira react, she wondered, if she found a replicator and produced a knife like Jadzia’s, if she let the blade slide across her palm, opening the half-healed wounds all over again? What would patient Bareil say if he walked in on her punching the walls until her knuckles broke? Would they let her indulge those urges, or be horrified at what she’d become? Would Kira tear the knife out of her hand and hold her down until she promised never to do it again? Would Bareil guide her away from the wall and sit with her until she was calm?

She hoped so. Those coping methods belonged in the other universe, with Jadzia and the Intendant. Maybe she couldn’t shake off their shadows, but she would not indulge them any more. She would not fall back on that place and the things it had taught her. And she would not put herself into a position where nobody was there to stop her.

She felt split apart, more so than she ever had before. The part of her that was still young Jadzia wanted nothing more than to wrap itself up in her friend, to forget everything she’d seen and done and been and just remember Lieutenant Dax and Major Kira, this universe and her place in it. She still couldn’t say ‘Nerys’, couldn’t even say ‘Kira’ without the stigma of her rank attached to it, and the little girl who thrived on such things wanted to draw comfort from that simplicity, from two officers on vacation together. That part of her wanted to keep things simple, to focus on what little she could still process, but the rest of her couldn’t do it. She couldn’t blind herself to those awful memories, the Intendant and everything she was, everything she’d made Dax, everything they did together.

It wasn’t fair on Kira, using her like that. It wasn’t fair that she was keeping her close as a security blanket without actually letting her in. It wasn’t fair that she was pushing her away and still trusting that she would keep her from losing herself. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t look at her, couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t even be in the same room without feeling her breath quicken. It wasn’t fair on Kira, and it wasn’t really fair on Dax either, but she could no more separate herself from where she’d been than she had ever been able to separate herself from Curzon. It was messy, and it was complicated; she wanted one thing but she needed another, and she was frightened of everything. She wanted to be more, to be better, but she couldn’t.

At long last, she turned away from the window, away from the deceptive view, away from the world outside, away from Bajor and all the things it meant. She let herself fall on the bed, but would not let herself sleep. She still remembered too vividly the last of her dreams, the pain and the horror, and she was afraid to relive it, frightened for the first time not of herself but of the creatures inside her head who would tear her apart.

That was strange, too, being afraid of phantasms that weren’t reflections of herself. It was her guilt made manifest, she knew, but it still felt odd. She was so used to being afraid of herself, afraid of losing control, afraid of enjoying it when she did, afraid of the violence and the hate and how seductive it all was. She was so used to hating herself, to being afraid of her thoughts and her feelings, so used to being afraid of dreaming things that felt good. It was unusual to be so afraid of things that were beyond her power, beyond even the loss of her control, things that were made of her thoughts but weren’t direct reflections of them. She hadn’t done anything, she’d simply been punished, and it felt strange to be afraid of that too.

Dax was an expert in the art of self-flagellation, of making herself suffer when she felt she deserved it. She remembered blood slick on her palm, bruises dark and cracked across her knuckles, self-inflicted pain to block out the shame and the horror of wanting to inflict it on others. She remembered all the things she had done to herself to keep Joran at bay, hours in holosuites fighting until she dropped, until there was nothing left of her, until she lay there in pools of her own sweat, unable to even stand. She remembered a thousand Klingon warriors and one sadistic Bajoran, a bat’leth in one hand and a knife in the other. She knew how to hurt herself, knew how to punish herself… but oh, that dream…

In a twisted kind of way, the fear was almost calming. It felt like the kind of fear she’d always imagined non-Trills felt, the kind of fear that was simple and straightforward, linear and cohesive. Fear of things that were beyond them, things that came from outside, nightmare creatures that took up weapons and words and used them. Dax had always been afraid of destroying herself; she had never thought to be afraid of being destroyed by something else.

She remembered the long flight back to the Badlands, alone in the cockpit of an alien ship, pacing back and forth through dead space, stumbling and stammering in a state of numb shock. She remembered how empty she’d been, how hollow, how desperate she’d been to feel anything at all, even fear, if only it would cast aside the void inside her. The guilt had come after, the self-loathing and the shame, the certainty that it had all been her fault, that Keiko had died for her, that she was responsible for everything, but when it had it felt strange and distant. It was very different to what she was used to; she knew all too well how it felt to be afraid of herself, to fear for the potential damage she might do, to fear what might happen if she let her anger exert itself. But with Keiko, for the first time, she had felt responsible for something that had actually happened, not for damage that might yet be done but for damage that already had been.

She wasn’t afraid of Joran any more. She wasn’t afraid of losing control, of losing her temper, of losing any part of herself by listening to him. She wasn’t afraid of what he had to offer, of the sadistic promises he murmured in her ear and branded on her dreams, visions of bones turned to sand and hearts torn from chests. Joran wasn’t the one who had condemned Keiko to death; he wasn’t the one who had turned around and left Jadzia alone, scared and confused, at a loss for how to make peace with herself. Joran wasn’t responsible for any of that; the worst he’d done was take pleasure in pain, and it was only now as she let herself think about it — the Intendant with Dax’s hands around her throat, Dax’s scream as she found her release, so much more affected by the sight of it than anything else — the more she couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was justified after all. After everything the Intendant did, after all the awful ways she treated her workers… after Keiko… who could blame Dax for taking some pleasure in watching her face contort with agony?

But then, of course, a small voice in her head just loved to remind her that none of those things had happened at the time, that when she had taken her pleasure in the Intendant’s pain all she’d known was her reputation. All she knew of the Intendant then was that she was a tyrant, a sadist, and that she looked like Kira Nerys. That was all Dax had known, and yet it had been enough to drag the perversions out of her. It had been Kira’s face she’d watched turn red, Kira’s gurgling gasps that had struck like desire between her legs, Kira’s suffering that had drawn the climax out of her. That was the truth of it, and she could not justify it now just because she knew what came next. She couldn’t make it right by knowing that worse wrongs were to come.

It felt almost like justice, what had happened to Keiko. It felt like all her fears made manifest in a single tragedy, everything she had dreaded in herself made real by someone else, nightmare visions turned to true blood because of her mistakes. A hundred hours in a holosuite couldn’t have prevented it, and a thousand bad dreams couldn’t have foreseen it. No, the only thing that could have changed that terrible outcome was her, Jadzia Dax, and she was the one who had failed. Everything that had happened had happened because of her. She may not have ordered Keiko’s death like the Intendant had, may not have pulled the trigger like Garak had, may not have wanted it to happen at all, but she was responsible. She was responsible for it all. And the worst part was, there wasn’t even a hint of Joran in what had happened.

It wasn’t Joran’s influence that had condemned Keiko to death. It was Jadzia’s. Jadzia Dax had antagonised the Intendant, clinging to what she believed was right instead of indulging his sadistic hate like they both wanted. Jadzia Dax had stayed a moment too long, had indulged that one last chance to sleep with a woman named Nerys. Jadzia Dax had recruited Garak to save a slave she felt she had condemned. Jadzia Dax had done everything, so why should she be afraid of Joran now? She had already seen the worst things she could do, and they didn’t come from him. The guilt was all hers, and so too was the punishment, the gouging of her eyes and tongue, the severing of her limbs, the loss of the symbiont—

She doubled over, stomach cramping in psychosomatic memory.

A knock at the door jolted her back to herself, and a sick sense of dread flooded in to chase away the spasms.

 _Kira_. Dax knew it was her by the force of the sound, a smart rapping that couldn’t possibly have come from the soft-spoken Vedek Bareil. She thought about ignoring her, or else telling her to go away, but Dax had never been able to turn away a well-meaning visitor, and it was by pure reflex that the Starfleet officer in her gritted out a grudging “Come in…” before the rest of her had a chance to say _‘go away’_.

“Jadzia?”

Dax groaned, swallowing the urge to bury her head in the pillow and pretend that she was actually asleep. Not that she could have, even if she’d wanted to; she was still curled in on herself, hugging her belly and trying to remind herself that the symbiont was still in there, still safe, still strong, still hers.

“Major,” she ground out, pressing her chin to her chest.

 _Kira,_ she thought. _Nerys. Intendant._

“You keep calling me that,” Kira murmured.

“It’s who you are,” Dax reminded them both. “You’re Major Kira.” It felt good, reassuring, and so she said it again. “You’re Major Kira.”

“Yes,” Kira said, very softly, like she really did understand. “Yes, I am.”

It was as hard to look at her now as it ever was, but Dax forced herself to look up and watch as Kira crossed the room uninvited. She sat herself down on the edge of the bed, moving with grace and care, and Dax unwound herself, settling back against the pillow and staring at the space between them. Kira was careful about that too, keeping just enough distance that Dax still had some of the personal space that she so desperately needed, and an escape route if Tobin’s ‘flight’ reflexes overpowered Emony and Curzon’s ‘fight’ ones. She knew her too well, Dax thought with a twinge in her chest… or maybe she just knew how to recognise and deal with other people’s trauma. Both options left an unpleasant taste in her mouth, and she wasn’t sure which one was worse.

“Can I help you?” she asked, hearing the hollowness of her voice.

Kira reached out as though to touch her, but seemed to think better of it and retreated another couple of centimetres instead. “I know you want your space,” she said, sighing heavily. “But Bareil and I were thinking of heading up into the hills to take in the view of the valley as the sun goes down. It really is beautiful this time of year…” She shrugged, looking a little sheepish. “I thought you might like to join us.”

Dax tried to laugh, but the sound died in her throat, lost to the fluff of the pillow as she pulled it close and hugged it to her chest, letting it stand as a makeshift barrier between the two of them. She had no doubt that Kira would pick up on the gesture, that she would know precisely what she was doing and why, but she didn’t particularly care; for the moment or two before she was called out on it, that pillow was as close to a sanctuary as she could remember.

“I don’t think so,” she said, as calmly and casually as she could. “If it’s all right, I don’t really feel like going anywhere.”

Kira sighed again, the barest ghost of a breath that whispered all the things she couldn’t put into words. _‘I understand’_ and _‘that’s all right’_ and _‘you don’t have to do anything but feel better’_ , a thousand worthless placations that might have sounded real in her own head but which they both knew would sound flat and empty to Dax’s ears. She had no room inside her for things like that, sweet but pointless encouragements and shallow comforts that carried none of the cruelty she so wanted.

“I thought you might say that,” Kira said, clearly trying very hard to mask her annoyance. “Come on, Dax. You know you can’t hide in here forever.”

“Apparently, I can’t even hide in here for five minutes,” Dax shot back, aggressive. “Look, Major. All I want is a little privacy, a little breathing room, a little space. Is that really so much to ask? Is it really so damn unreasonable to just want five minutes to myself?”

Kira closed her eyes, barely longer than a blink but tangible nonetheless. “Of course it’s not,” she sighed when she opened them again. “I never said it was. But we both know that it’s not like you to want that, much less ask for it. You’re the most social soul I’ve ever known, Dax, and it’s not like you to lock yourself up like this.”

She was right about that, though Dax didn’t want to admit it. She really wasn’t the sort to hide herself away, not from her problems or anything else. Well, she amended, _Dax_ wasn’t like that, though the part of her that was still the young initiate Jadzia couldn’t deny that she occasionally still felt the urge to duck her head and cower. The symbiont Dax had lived for eight lifetimes; it had accumulated more than three hundred years’ worth of bad memories, but when they struck it never shied away from any one of them. Jadzia, for all the wisdom she’d gained from being joined, was still very young and not nearly as strong as she pretended to be, and she did not handle her own weaknesses well. She hid from herself, hid from her flaws and fears, hid from everything she could.

It was Dax that wanted to face Kira now, to get it all over with, to suck it up and deal with it like the man she had been three times ( _four_ times, Joran reminded her with a sinister smile), to face Kira now while the wound was raw and open. It was Jadzia, of course, who wanted to press the pillow against her stomach until the symbiont suffocated and the host was free to hide once more.

In the end, she couldn’t quite bring herself to do either. For a long moment, all she could do was stare up at her, feeling inexplicably small as she huddled on the bed, watching as the fire crackled and flare behind those beautiful Bajoran eyes, those eyes that had haunted her dreams for good or for ill for almost as long as she could remember. She took a deep breath, suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to pour out all the horrors she’d been carrying around, the pain and the guilt and everything else, to spill it all out in sordid detail, the dreams and the reality that was so much worse, to unleash it all and douse that fierce Bajoran fire with the flood of it. She didn’t know whether it was the symbiont’s need to confront that was pushing her to feel that way, or the host’s ache to throw all those feelings away and cower from them and from Kira both, to put everything all in the same place and hide from it all together. She didn’t know, and frankly she didn’t care.

There was so much sobriety in Kira’s face now. She was so somber, with just a hint of Bareil’s quietude flickering on her expression, self-control and practiced restraint; it was so far removed from the Intendant, from the dark and twisted woman that Dax remembered, that for just a second or two she could almost let herself forget they were the same person. It was only a second, though, flashing and fleeting, and then the truth came crashing back down over her, memory that struck harder than a blow, and that brief burst of courage sputtered out and extinguished itself.

“Look,” she said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “I just want to be left alone. That’s all. It’s nothing personal, Major, I just—”

“But it is,” Kira interrupted. “It is personal, isn’t it?”

Dax fought back the urge to flinch, willed herself to blink and shrug, to look innocent and ambiguous even as she knew it wouldn’t fool either one of them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mumbled.

“I’m talking about us,” Kira snapped, losing her patience. “Bareil keeps telling me to be patient, to give you some space, to let you work through this all on your own. He keeps saying that you just need to ‘clear your head’ or ‘figure things out for yourself’ or any one of a thousand excuses he’s made for you. And I’ve tried. I really have. He’s a vedek. He knows more about spiritual healing than I do, and I’ve really, really tried to listen to him when he tells me what’s best for you. The Prophets know I could use all the guidance I can get.”

“But you’re still here,” Dax pointed out, squeezing the pillow. “You’re still sitting on my bed and talking to me and trying to…”

She trailed off, throat tight, trying not to remember the Intendant sitting here like this, smiling at her just like this, all softness and faux-sympathy even as she buried her hand between Dax’s thighs, strong and seductive and sticky and—

“Jadzia.”

“Don’t.”

“Exactly.” Kira huffed an impatient sound, deep and low. “You can’t sit here and tell me it’s nothing personal, then look away and turn pale like that, and expect me to smile and nod and pretend to believe you.”

“Why not?” Dax demanded; the battle was lost before it was started, and they both knew it, but she stuck to her guns as stubbornly as she always did. “It’s the truth. This has nothing to do with you. It’s not personal, and it’s not—”

“Oh, really?” Kira barked a laugh, vicious and bitter. “Then maybe you’d like to explain why I’m the only one you’ve been avoiding. Do you really think I haven’t noticed the way you can’t even say my name? Or the way you’ll talk to Bareil without even blinking, and then turn away and hide your face as soon as I say anything to either one of you? You’d barely even exchanged five words with him before today, and all of a sudden, he’s your new best friend and you’re looking anywhere in the room except at me. If that’s not personal, I don’t know what is, and it’s an insult to both of our intelligence to pretend otherwise.” She shook her head, looking very much liked she wished she could shake Dax instead. “Why can’t you act like the centuries-old symbiont you keep insisting you are, and just admit it?”

Dax took a deep breath, as much to quash her temper as to brace herself against the flood of words and unwanted emotion. “Why can’t _you_ listen to your vedek and just leave me alone?”

“Because Bareil doesn’t know you,” Kira told her flatly. “He may know more about spirituality and healing than I do, and I have no doubt that he knows more about the Prophets than I ever will. But he doesn’t know you. He only knows what I’ve told him about you, and I exaggerated most of that anyway. He doesn’t know the arrogant, stubborn, headstrong Trill that I know. He doesn’t know Dax, and he doesn’t know Jadzia.”

Dax flinched at the name. “Don’t call me that.”

Kira raised a brow, but seemed to know better than to press the issue just then. “Forget what I’m calling you. I’m talking about Bareil. Bareil hasn’t shared a station with you for two and a half years. He’s never seen you up to your neck in ODN relays. He’s never seen you at the end of a thirty-six hour shift or first thing in the morning before you get a raktajino in you. He’s never seen you so tired you can’t think straight, or so drunk you can’t see straight, or losing your temper after getting beaten at tongo, or…”

But Dax had stopped listening after ‘drunk’. Her mind had catapulted her back to Terok Nor, to that ill-fated decision to drink too much bloodwine at exactly the wrong moment, to the passion-filled horrors that had followed. Again, she remembered her hands around the Intendant’s throat, heat striking like a lash between her legs as she watched her choke and gasp, how desperately she’d struggled to keep from feeling it and how futile that struggle had been. She remembered the ecstasy, the euphoria and the release, unwitting surrender to something so much more powerful than herself. She remembered… she remembered…

Would she have been stronger if she was sober? The question came out of nowhere, but it chilled her to the bone. Would she have been able to hold the perverse sadism at bay if she’d had full control of her faculties? She remembered blaming Curzon for her inebriation, blaming his enthusiasm and his constitution, both so much greater that Jadzia’s own, and wondered if she could blame him for what happened in the Intendant’s bed as well. Jadzia did not drink at all; it was Curzon who delighted in it. Jadzia didn’t take pleasure from pain; it was Joran who felt that way. How could she have been held responsible for that?

Did it matter?, she wondered. In the end, she was as weak to Curzon’s desires as Joran’s, as weak to the thrall of liquor as to seduction. They had both filled her head with things she hadn’t been able to fight off, and did it really matter that one happened to be a little bit more sordid than the other? 

_Of course it matters!_ She recognised the corner of her psyche that belonged to Curzon, his voice as clear as a klaxon, and she imagined him shaking his head in disgust at her naivety. _You can call me an indulgent old man all you like, little girl, but you know I’d never hurt anyone. Where’s the harm if I drink too much? I’m the one who has to deal with the hangover, and I’d never make anyone else suffer for my indulgences._

If she was alone, Dax probably would’ve laughed at the absurdity of that. He made her suffer for them, didn’t he?

Not that it made much of a difference, she supposed. The Intendant had been right when she’d accused her of blaming her past hosts for every little indiscretion. Jadzia had always been such a good girl, diligent and studious, polite and obedient to a fault; it just made sense to blame the symbiont for every strange urge or unexpected desire, every little thing that turned her against the creed she’d stood by throughout her young life. It made sense to blame Curzon when she got drunk, and it made sense to blame Joran when she felt violent or perverted.

But then, wasn’t she the one doing those things? Wasn’t it Jadzia Dax who drank too much and took such pleasure from the Intendant’s pain, and from her own as well. She could blame them all she liked but she could not change that. Jadzia was Dax, and she was the one who indulged those urges. The dead may have voices to a joined Trill, but only the host could take action, and who was that if not Jadzia?

Maybe it would have made a difference if she was sober, if the Intendant had caught her clear-headed when she tried to goad those terrible things out of her. And maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe she would have been doomed no matter what state she’d been in. Either way, it was done. Just like that place, that experience, just like Keiko and that universe’s Jadzia, it was done. What was the good in thinking of it now? What possible good would it do? It just made her feel nauseous all over again, the dull throb starting up once more behind her eyes, the ache and the queasiness so reminiscent of the hangover that had followed, the room spinning and tilting around her, the—

“Dax!”

She blinked, shaking off the cobwebs of memory. “Hm?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

Dax swallowed. “Sorry… I was…” She swallowed down a steadying breath, wishing she couldn’t still taste the revenant of bloodwine, or hear its echo roaring in her ears. “I was…”

“I know where you were,” Kira snapped, and Dax could tell that she wasn’t just talking about the dark place inside her head, that she was talking about all those dark places, the ones she hadn’t quite left behind. “Dax, you can’t keep—”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out, desperate to interrupt. “I’ll pay attention.”

Kira rolled her eyes. “You have plenty to apologise for,” she remarked, and Dax trembled to think of how little she knew. “But don’t waste your time apologising for that. Do you think I really care that you were distracted? Jadzia—”

“Don’t.”

“Dax, then. By the Prophets, why can’t you just talk to me?”

Dax remembered her hands locked around the Intendant’s neck, fingers digging in deep and raising bruises. She remembered finding her release, unwitting and unwanted, in the very moment she realised that she didn’t care if she really did strangle her. She remembered her traitorous body hearing the Intendant’s words — _Kira’s_ words — whispered so deliciously in her ear, choked by lack of breath, gasping and suffocating. She remembered how good it had felt, and how terrible it was to feel so good. She remembered the hum of bloodwine in her veins, half-forgotten snatches of Klingon battle-songs resonating in the back of her mind, Curzon’s appreciation of good liquor and good women coupled with Jadzia’s illicit appreciation of Kira Nerys, both twisted into something brutal by Joran’s appreciation of sex and violence and horror.

She closed her eyes, blocking out the memory, blocking out the Intendant, blocking out Kira, blocking out everything. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I just can’t.”

Kira sighed, frustrated and annoyed. She was trying so hard to be sympathetic, Dax could tell, when in truth she probably wanted nothing more than to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. In truth, Dax couldn’t help thinking she’d probably be more responsive to that than the empathy anyway, but it was still too much of a task to talk, so she didn’t say so. She just countered Kira’s sigh with one of her own, and waited patiently for Kira to put all her aggravation into words.

“I told you not to go,” she said at last. “I warned you about that universe. I warned you about those people. I warned you and warned you and warned you. But you just had to play the hero, didn’t you?” She looked away. “Why couldn’t you just listen to me?”

Dax stiffened. She knew that Kira was right, that she shouldn’t have gone, that she should have just listened to her and stayed in her own universe, where it was safe and normal; everything that had happened made that clear enough, and the tumultuous state of her thoughts were all the evidence either of them needed. But Kira was also right when she’d pointed out that Dax could never back down from a challenge; she was a slave to her own stubbornness, and it was by pure instinct that she arched her back and straightened her spine.

“I did what I had to do,” she said. She knew that she’d let herself be baited, but as always her ego was in the pilot’s seat. “Not that it’s any of your business anyway.”

“Are you sure about that?” Kira shot back roughly. Her lips quirked as she spoke, like she wasn’t sure whether to be pleased by the opening to point her fingers or frustrated that Dax needed to be told any of this in the first place. “If word of this gets back to Sisko, or anyone else in your precious Starfleet, I’m just as culpable as you. Did you think about that when you went off half-cocked? Did you stop to think, even for a second, that you weren’t the only one who’ll get in trouble if this gets out?”

Dax’s stomach soured at the reminder. She thought about Garak, his face a swollen mess of bruises, glaring at her through the static hiss of a force field and telling her the same thing. _You never think,_ she scolded herself, self-righteousness echoing through her head with his voice. _You never stop to think about the effect you might have on other people. You never stop to think at all._

“Well, then,” she said, with an edge. “We’d better make sure it doesn’t get out, hadn’t we?” She shut out the memory of garish Cardassian bruises. “It never happened. None of it happened. And if Benjamin asks—”

“Right.” Kira rolled her eyes, disgusted. “Of course. That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? Duck your head and bury yourself in the sand and pretend that nothing ever happened. Prophets forbid you have to actually deal with the fallout from your own stupidity once in a while.” She shook her head. “No, no. Best to just sweep it all under the carpet and hope nobody ever finds out. The hell with consequences, the hell with responsibility, the hell with everything. Right?”

Her temper was rising, but so was Dax’s. As far as she’d come, as much as she liked to believe she’d made real progress in integrating Joran’s personality with her own, still sometimes she became a victim to her temper, and still sometimes she found the mood of the room bearing down on her like thick heat. She felt overwhelmed for a moment, wrapped up in the anger, and before she even realised she’d moved at all, she was sitting up straight, fists balled and trembling at her sides.

“That’s unfair,” she said hotly. “That’s unfair, and you know it.”

“No,” Kira snapped. “I don’t know it. All I know is that you left me alone. You ran off and you left me alone to worry about you. You were gone for a week, Dax! A _week_! What if you’d died out there? I was the one who let you go. I was the one who didn’t do more to stop you. If you’d died, it would’ve been on my shoulders. I would’ve… I would have…” She trailed off, shaking with anguish and anger. “Dammit, Jadzia, I would have lost you!”

“Don’t—”

“—call you that. I heard you the first ten times.” Kira growled, frustration building in the space between them. “Why can’t you just accept that you screwed up? Why can’t you just admit that you were reckless and selfish and stupid? For once in your life, why can’t you just say _‘you were right’_?”

Dax hugged herself, squeezing the cavity inside of her where the symbiont rested. “Because you weren’t.”

Kira sighed again, all of her characteristic Bajoran impatience shining through. “I’m not Bareil,” she said, trembling with the effort of keeping her voice down. “I’m not stupid. I know you, and I know that this—” She gestured, taking in the room, taking in the way Dax was hunched over her symbiont, taking in all the things she was trying to hide behind, and all the things she was trying to hide from. “—isn’t you. You can hide all you want, but you’re never going to be any good at it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dax hissed.

“It means you need to stop this now. Stop pretending it’s not personal. Stop pretending it’s not about me… about us… about _her_. We both know what happened, Dax, so why don’t you just—”

“No.” Her voice was sharp, pitched with something that tasted like panic and sounded like pain. “We don’t know anything.”

“Oh, stop deluding yourself,” Kira said. “Are you forgetting that I’ve been over there too? I went to that universe long before you did, and I know exactly what it’s like over there.” Suddenly, she was the one taking a deep breath, and though she still couldn’t bring herself to look at her, Dax could tell that she was readying herself for a painful confession. “And I know what _she’s_ like.”

Because she was nothing if not masochistic, Dax opted to play dumb. It was easier this way, she told herself, easier to deny, to pretend, to ignore. Easier to think of herself, and not of all the different faces that Kira had worn. “I thought you never met the other Jadzia.”

Kira actually laughed at that, a dangerous, _‘who are you trying to fool?’_ kind of laugh. “I’m not talking about her,” she said. “And you know it.”

“Enlighten me, then,” Dax replied stubbornly.

Kira didn’t touch her, but she made a point of repositioning herself, shifting on the bed until she was right up in her personal space, leaning in so that Dax could not avoid her eyes or the fire in them. “Do you really want me to do that?” she asked, very quietly. “Do you really want me to say her name? You can’t even hear your own, or mine. Do you really want me to say hers?”

Dax closed her eyes tight because it was the only way she had to block out Kira’s. She thought of another bed, one so different from this, of sweat-soaked sheets wrapped around her battered body, stark white against blues and reds. She thought of her hands, Kira’s throat, choking gasps and desperate whimpers. She thought of sex, of pleasure and pain, of perversion and violence and hate. She thought of lips, teeth, tongues, of fists and fingers, of the edge of a blade, of…

_Nerys._

“Yes,” she heard herself whisper, defiant and tremulous. “Say it.”

 _Her name is better than yours,_ she thought. _May your damned Prophets forgive me, she hurts less than you do._

She could feel the surprise in Kira, the air between them turning suddenly cold and unyielding as she leaned back. Dax supposed she’d expected her to hide again, to hunker down and cower behind bravado and brashness, to demand privacy, to insist again that this was none of Kira’s business, even to assault her if none of the others worked, to say or do anything and everything she could think of just to make her go away. It was still tempting, if only for the excuse to lash out at something, but she didn’t. She wanted to hear it. She wanted Nerys to say it, to connect herself to that twisted tyrant like Dax already had. She wanted it to be true, to be real, so that she wouldn’t have to be ashamed for imagining it was.

“All right,” Kira said softly, after a long moment. “I know what the _Intendant_ is like.”

She spat the title out like it was poison, and Dax flinched in spite of herself. “Do you?” she asked, a prayer shrouded in challenge.

Kira met the challenge, ignoring the prayer. “Yes, I do. I know how ruthless she is. I know what she’s capable of. I know the things she’s done and I know that she’s proud of them. I know how she feels, how she thinks, what she believes. And I know that she takes what she wants. If she wants something… or someone…” Her voice cracked, as sharp as the shattering of a mirror. “…one way or another, she’ll have it.”

Dax felt her facade crack too, wilful ignorance drowning in memory, in pain, in pleasure. “That’s quite an assumption,” she managed. “What makes you so sure that she’d want me?”

For a long moment, Kira didn’t say anything. Even as she knew it was a mistake, Dax opened her eyes to glance at her, mouth already half-open to press the challenge, to keep herself on the offensive, to make Kira second-guess herself and her words, to take back those awful and accurate implications. Kira had to be the one doubting herself, the one frowning and wondering, the one who was confused. Dax had to keep her on her guard, had to make her take those accusations back… but the sight of Kira’s face, suddenly drawn and pale and horrified, silenced her completely.

From the second she’d walked in, unwanted and uninvited, Kira had been the one in control of this situation. She had been the one with her finger on the pulse of Dax’s mood, the one who knew what to say and when, how to pitch her voice and how to deal with Dax’s uncharacteristic flightiness, how to deal with Dax and all the terrible things she’d become. She’d known when to push, and how hard, had dragged Dax out of her shell, had forced her to at least acknowledge all those things she wasn’t ready to deal with. She had been a pillar of strength, the depthless courage of a Bajoran terrorist alight in her, illuminated all the more by the tentative fire of friendship, the affection that Dax knew she still sometimes struggled with.

Right now, though, all of that courage and strength seemed to have abandoned her. She looked like Dax had just asked her to cut out her own heart and feed it to her (and somewhere in her head, Joran cursed himself for not thinking of that delicious idea first). She looked like Dax had said something unspeakable, and Dax wanted nothing more than to apologise for whatever it was, to take it all back if only it would take that look off her face, but Kira looked so stunned, so utterly shell-shocked that Dax doubted she would hear her even if she shouted it at the top of her lungs.

And yet, even now, there was still a part of her that saw the Intendant, a part that still thrilled and shivered as she remembered her own hands around her throat; that part, the perverse corner of her mind that still housed Joran and his violence fetish couldn’t stave the urge to squeeze, to press her fingers into the open wound that was so clear behind Kira’s eyes right now, to dig in deep and rend the cries from her, to split her open and force her to spill out everything that was making her so uncomfortable, to make her struggle like Dax was struggling. It was the allure of the unknown, a weakness of all Daxes, coupled with the part of her that still couldn’t quite control the hate, those unshakeable memories and the way her body still responded.

“Nerys…” she heard herself whimper, choking on the name for the first time since that awful moment, since she’d felt it cut from her throat, a desperate whisper in the throes of ecstasy.

And suddenly, as though she could hear all that, as though she knew it, as though Dax had come undone right in front of her, keening and sobbing and crying her name… suddenly it was Kira who closed her eyes, Kira who turned away, Kira who lurched off the bed and stumbled towards the door. Suddenly, it was Kira who wanted the conversation to end, Kira who felt the call of something personal, Kira who was flushing and trembling under the weight of something so much bigger than she was.

“Of course she’d want you,” she whispered at last, a wretched confession. “She’s me, isn’t she?”


	34. Chapter 34

“…what?”

Dax felt the colour drain from her face, felt all the strength go out of her limbs, felt the world tilt and turn itself upside-down. At the very edge of her awareness, she could hear her own voice, a frenzied kind of ramble that probably would have made very little sense even if she had been in any condition to hear the words, but even that was drowned out by the maddening insect-like noise that buzzed between her ears and vibrated inside her head. The world had devolved into a dizzy haze around her, a hiss of static and plasma and electricity, nonsense screaming in the space between the thundering of her heart, and for a long moment all she could process was the word ‘me’.

“Dax.” Kira. Nerys. Intendant. Major.

“… _what_?” she heard herself mumble again, and then again, until there was nothing else, until even the insect buzz silenced itself and the static sputtered and faded.

Kira swore through gritted teeth, a grated-out Bajoran curse that Dax had never heard before. “Jadzia…”

“Now?” Dax moaned, cradling her head. “You’re telling me this _now_?”

“I’m not ‘telling you’ anything,” Kira argued, but she was flushing and heated just the same. “And you can forget whatever you’re thinking. This has nothing to do with… it’s not about… dammit, Dax, I’m trying to make a point here!”

“And you couldn’t have thought of a better way of making it?” Dimly, Dax realised that this was probably the most like herself she’d sounded since she got back. Angry, yes, but in all the right ways and for all the right reasons. Righteous, and rightly so. “You couldn’t have thought of something a bit less dramatic than blurting out that you—”

“—that I know how the Intendant thinks?” Kira shot back, and the words struck Dax in the face like a bucket of ice-cold water. “That’s the only thing I’m talking about right now, and that’s the only thing we’re going to discuss.” Her eyes turned to molten steel. “Is that clear, Lieutenant?”

Dax clenched her jaw until it hurt, until the pain drowned out the revenant effects of shock and disbelief, until she trusted herself to reply without losing her temper and her dignity and anything else she had left of herself. “Perfectly,” she muttered, “ _Major_.”

“Good.” Her eyes were dark and fierce, obsidian touched by flame. “Because I’m not going to let you drag either of us off-track.” She took a breath, seemingly needing to steady herself just as much as Dax needed the same. “I know her. I know everything about her, and not just because I met her and saw it all for myself. I know her, because I _am_ her.” Dax flinched, remembering Jadzia, and Kira frowned at the reaction, making the obvious misinterpretation. “So don’t think for a second that you can convince me she didn’t take you.”

For a moment, Dax actually considered letting her believe that things really were as simple as that, that she was good and the Intendant was evil, that violence was something that only evil people did. It was the Cardassian occupation all over again, playing out in slow-motion in Kira’s head. The Intendant as the brutal figurehead of oppression and brutality and Dax as the innocent victim of someone else’s cruelty. Wouldn’t it all be so easy if that really was how it had happened? Wouldn’t it be so much more wonderful if the blame fell squarely on the tyrant’s shoulders?

But it didn’t, and Dax couldn’t let Kira believe it did. She alone was responsible for what had happened in the other universe. Dax had never been a passive player, not in anything and certainly not in this, and she would not allow Kira to sit back and think that she could be so easily broken. It was an insult to them both, and a blow against her guilty conscience. The violence was inside herself; all the Intendant had done was encourage it, and Dax would not allow Kira to wash her clean of that. She would not allow her to take that guilt away.

“Think what you want,” she said out loud. “It makes no difference to me.”

“Really?” Kira demanded, not believing it any more than Dax herself would have if their positions had been reversed. “Because from where I’m sitting, it makes a big difference. Just look at yourself. You’re one of the bravest non-Bajorans I’ve ever met, and you’re trembling at the sight of me. You can’t even look at me, can’t even say my name… you might as well just admit what we both already know. You’re scared of me.”

 _You don’t understand,_ Dax thought, and drew comfort from the fact. _I hope you never understand._

Aloud, she forced herself to laugh. “You’re flattering yourself,” she said, wishing she could sound malicious instead of weak. “I didn’t go there for the Intendant, and you know it. I went there for _her_.” She swallowed hard, convulsive and urgent, bracing herself to hear the other name that hurt so deep. “Jadzia.”

Kira shrugged, as though she didn’t see how that was relevant to the conversation at all. In truth, Dax supposed it probably wasn’t; they’d both worked on Deep Space Nine for long enough to know that the best laid plans were also the ones most likely to go awry. Still, she was annoyed that Kira could see through her facade from just a few averted glances and the occasional flinch; she hated that Kira was so perceptive, hated that she herself was so obvious. She hated everything about this conversation, and she had no intention of making it easy on either of them.

“I don’t care why you went there,” Kira was saying, voice flat. “You ended up on Terok Nor, or wherever the hell that narcissistic creature is now. And she—”

“Stop it,” Dax interrupted, and knew in the instant the words left her lips that Kira would read them as an agreement, an acknowledgement of every simple stupid thing she wanted so desperately to believe. “You weren’t there, and you don’t understand, so just stop.”

There was fire in Kira’s eyes now, the feral ferocity of a true terrorist, a warrior so impassioned by the cause they had chosen to fight for that nothing could deter her from her path. She would ride out this conversation to its bitter end, Dax could tell, even if it took all night. She would tear through every one of Dax’s defences, no matter how valid or how true, and not care if their friendship crashed and burned in the process. She would destroy them both just to see this thing through, even though she must realise it was doomed.

Dax couldn’t help feeling a little betrayed. Kira must surely realise the folly in pushing this, the danger in seeing what she was so sure was there and the deeper danger in seeing what she refused to believe. If she was wrong, there was so much more than wounded pride at stake, and if she was right, she risked inflicting even more damage to a deep and festering wound. If even half of what she thought was true, all she was doing by pushing it was hurting the woman she was supposed to care about, and if none of it was, she was just floundering to protect a soul that was already long dead.

Either way, with all her wisdom on the subject of pain, Kira had to know that nothing good would come of pursuing this, but she seemed wholly unable to steer away from it now that she had chosen to begin. Come what may, they would see this through, and all they could do was pray to the Prophets that one of them was still standing at the end.

“I’ll stop when you tell me I’m wrong,” Kira said, dogged to the last.

“Fine.” The word tore right out from her like a phaser blast, keen with pinpoint precision, and she swung off the bed with a violence that startled them both. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong and you’re blind, and you’re stupid. Dammit, Major, why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“That’s why,” Kira said; she spoke very softly, but her voice carried as though she’d shouted at the top of her lungs. “You haven’t called me ‘Major’ in more than a year.”

Dax closed her eyes. _Nerys,_ she thought, and her mouth filled with the taste of blood. “Things change,” she said.

“Not you,” Kira pressed, almost desperate. “You don’t change. I change. One minute I’m a terrorist, and the next I’m a confused kid in an internment camp. I’m a diplomat, I’m the first officer of a Federation space station, I’m a hero and a villain and a thousand other things. I’m the one who changes, Dax, not you. You change bodies, change faces, change identities, but you don’t _change_. You’re still Dax. Whatever happens, you’re always Dax.”

Dax whimpered against the words. They were soft, reassuring, and it stung that she let them comfort her. For just a moment, a few halting heartbeats before she remembered where she’d been and what she’d done, before she remembered the thing she had become, before she remembered what it meant to be Dax… for just a few fractured seconds, she let herself be comforted.

It was unforgivable. She wasn’t here to be comforted, wasn’t here to be reassured or softened. Why wasn’t Kira staring at her like the monster she was? Why wasn’t she backing away, flinching and retreating, afraid of the terrible thing that dark place had twisted her friend into? Why was she looking at her like that, like Dax deserved those words, that comfort, the urgency of her faith? Why didn’t she hate her?

Maybe she was still Dax, maybe she hadn’t changed, but if that was true, it just meant she’d always been this terrible thing, this twisted husk of violence and hate, this heart-eating creature with blood on her hands and the bones of her victims scattered at her feet. It was unforgivable that she’d let herself be comforted, and it was unforgivable that Kira would try to comfort her. She reeled away, staggering, putting as much space as she could between them, bracing against the window and staring down at the garden.

“Leave me alone,” she said, and she could feel the frustration radiating out from Kira, awareness that she’d almost broken through. “I’ll come to you when I’m ready.” She pressed her palms against the glass, frosted its surface with her breath. “When _I’m_ ready, Major. Not when you are.”

“And what if you’re never ‘ready’?” Kira pressed.

Dax could sense the guerrilla fighter in her rising up again, the terrorist who didn’t have the benefit of waiting for anyone to be ‘ready’ when an assault could be lurking around the next corner. Kira knew the importance of facing problems head-on, while she had breath left to face them with, and she knew the dangers in waiting when the next breath could be their last. Patience was for people with the luxury of time, and Kira had never known that luxury in her life.

“I will be,” Dax told, her, hollow and empty.

“That’s not exactly reassuring,” Kira muttered, and Dax supposed she couldn’t blame her for feeling that way. “But since you’re so sure of yourself, why don’t you tell me what happens if you’re still not ‘ready’ when we go back to Deep Space Nine? What happens if you’re still not ‘ready’ the next time there’s some kind of emergency? What happens when we have to work together to save the lives of everyone on the station, but you still can’t function because you’re not ‘ready’? What then, Lieutenant?”

She spat out the title like it was poison, and Dax recognised the same frenzy in her tone that she’d heard so often in the Intendant’s. She watched her fingers tremble against the glass, fearful all over again as she saw herself tangled up once more in those sweat-soaked sheets, twisted in more ways than one. It really was Kira that she was scared of this time, just as much as she was scared of herself. The thought upset her, and she pushed away from the window to face her, to face the thing she was so afraid of.

“I’m a Starfleet officer,” she reminded them both, breathing hard and hating herself for it. “Don’t you dare insinuate that I’m not capable of doing my job. Don’t you dare suggest that I can’t put my personal feelings aside when I need to.”

Kira’s eyes widened, horror softened by hurt. “I didn’t say anything about feelings,” she said, very quietly. “You can’t possibly think any of this has anything to do with feelings. You can’t possibly…” She shook her head, eyes on fire as they locked onto Dax’s, searching her face for some semblance of the friend she knew, then shook her head in wordless disbelief. “She’s even more twisted than I thought.”

Dax barked a deranged laugh. “Of course,” she snorted. “She’s the one who’s twisted, isn’t she? She’s the one who’s dangerous. She’s the one who’s ruthless and cruel, the one who takes what she wants, who hurts people for the sheer hell of it, who tortures innocents and then has them killed just to make some sick point.” Her voice broke, and her heart threatened to do the same, but still she did not stop. “That’s all her, isn’t it? That’s all _her_.”

Kira’s eyes were wide now, horrified and a little frightened. “Jadzia—”

“Don’t call me that!” Dax shouted.

Suddenly, she was right back on Terok Nor, gasping for breath, fisting the sheets, biting down to keep from screaming, pleasure touched by pain or pain turned to pleasure and wasn’t it all the same? Suddenly it wasn’t Kira standing there with bright eyes and a mouth half-open, but _her_ , the Intendant with her honeyed tongue and her sordid seduction and her intimate knowledge of pain. Suddenly Dax was right there, like she’d never left at all, and suddenly she had to use everything she had just to keep from lashing out with her fists, all the self-control of seven lifetimes struggling to keep the wayward eighth from taking control completely and beating the memories into submission.

Kira, of course, mistook the trembling in her limbs for something different, and chose precisely the wrong moment for an intervention. She stepped forwards, crashing into Dax’s personal space like it meant less than nothing, like it wasn’t dangerous, and gripped her by the arms. No doubt, she thought that Dax was on the brink of a different kind of meltdown, that her presence might prove calming, that she might be able to break through to her, and Dax supposed she could understand that impulse. 

If she’d still held some semblance of herself, it might have even worked. Dax had always been quick to temper, even before she’d had any reason to be, but she was just as quick to compose herself too. A quick outburst and a stream of Klingon curses was usually enough to cool her mood, no matter the situation, and she supposed she couldn’t blame Kira for not seeing anything beyond that, for assuming in spite of all the evidence to the contrary that the woman standing before her was still her Jadzia.

She wan’t, though. Not any more. Joran had changed her, and so too had the other universe. It had been an uphill struggle for Dax to reconcile herself with that, and even now she wasn’t entirely sure she’d been completely successful. All she knew was that she was not the same person who had left this universe a week ago, the frightened but optimistic young woman who had assured her friend Nerys that she would be fine, that she needed to do this. That young Jadzia was gone, and the twisted mess that had returned was just Dax.

It was Dax who bared her teeth, jaw clenched. It was Dax who tightened her muscles, eyes flashing with threat. “Back off,” she hissed.

But Kira didn’t listen. Kira never listened, never knew what was best for her. If she had, she never would have come here, never would have knocked on the door, never would have entered. She would have listened to Bareil when he told her to leave her friend alone, would have heeded his sage vedek’s advice and walked away. She would have been smarter, stronger, safer… but then, she wouldn’t be Kira.

Just as Dax had known she would, she held fast, grasp tightening around her arms and eyes reflecting the flare in Dax’s, a quiet riposte. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, whispering the words like a secret. “I know you, Jadzia, and I’m not afraid of you.”

Once, before all this, that would have been exactly what Dax needed to hear. It would have cut through the noise inside her head, the clamour of violence, the memories of terrible places and the desire to do terrible things. It would have reminded her of who she was and who she was with, of where they were, of Bajor and Bajorans, of Jadzia and Nerys, of them. It would have shoved Joran aside and broken through to the part of her that was just Jadzia, to the little voice inside of her that still couldn’t help thinking there was something illicit in the way Kira’s closeness made her heart flutter and her body tingle. It would have reminded her of those simple feelings, the innocence of them, the purity of looking into a friend’s eyes and seeing something familiar.

Those simple words — _‘I’m not afraid of you’_ — would have given her strength and courage, would have fortified her faith in herself, fortified Kira’s faith in her. They would have reminded her that she wasn’t frightening, that Kira would not allow her her be frightening, that the two of them could defeat this thing inside her, and that they would.

But that was a very long time ago, back when she’d wanted it to be defeated. That was before the Intendant, before Jadzia, before Garak and Keiko, before that universe and everything in it, before the shy little girl had been ground down underneath booted heels and Cardassian ridges and delicate spots that matched her own. It was before she’d realised she couldn’t be saved, before she’d understood what it meant to be joined, even to that thing that scared her. Before, there might have been a chance for her. But things had changed now, and whatever Kira might want to believe, so had she.

Kira had no idea who she was dealing with, not any more. The friend she had talked to on the runabout all that time ago was long gone now, and she would never come back. For good or for bad, she had become something new, and the rage was a part of her now. That soft-hearted little girl that Kira imagined she knew was gone too, broken and brutalised, half-dead and withering away to nothing. She was still inside her somewhere, but far out of sight and beyond her grasp, and if Dax herself couldn’t reach her now, then Kira Nerys didn’t stand a chance.

_I’m not afraid of you._

A week ago, it might have been a comfort, a reminder that there was still something in her that Kira could recognise, a ghost of the woman she cared about, a ghost of the woman Dax could barely recognise in herself. It would have bolstered her, strengthened her against the frightening thoughts that were still so strange and so new. Now, however, it was like a Red Alert klaxon, lighting up every nerve in her body and readying her for battle. She didn’t want Kira to recognise her, didn’t want her to see the woman she cared about, didn’t want her to see anything good in her at all. She wanted her to be sickened, horrified. Where was the comfort in knowing she was not afraid when fear was all she wanted?

 _You’re not afraid of me?_ , she thought, feeling her fists tighten to stone. _Well, then I’ll just have to make you afraid._

She moved without thought or decision, letting her primal instincts (no, she reminded herself, Joran’s primal instincts) take hold here just as they had on Terok Nor. She remembered the Intendant’s back against the wall, Dax’s arm pressed hard to hold her in place, rage and hatred and violence thick like bile in her throat, pouring out everything she hadn’t been able to show in Ore Processing, unleashing a lifetime’s worth of violence and a universe’s worth of righteousness in a single explosion. She remembered it with perfect clarity, the feeling, the brutality, the urgency. She remembered it all, and she relived it now.

This Kira was not the Intendant any more than the Intendant had been her Nerys. She knew it now just as she’d known it then, but knowing it hadn’t been enough to stop her from whispering _“Nerys”_ in the Intendant’s bed, and it wasn’t enough stop her from putting her hands around this Kira’s throat and seeing the Intendant.

“Dax!”

She heard the name, and in some distant corner of her mind she recognised it as her own, the lone syllable calling out not just to the little girl who had wanted so desperately to be joined, but to all the hosts that had come and gone before her, to Curzon and Emony, Audrid and Tobin, Lela and Torias, to all of them except him, to any shred of the Dax symbiont that could remember a life before it became so angry. Kira didn’t care which corner of Dax she reached, just so long as she broke through to one of them, just so long as she could dredge up some tiny fragment of the woman she thought she knew so well.

It was futile, of course, and as Dax dug her fingers in deep, the sick horror that flooded her senses — a numb and neutered revenant of that shy little girl — was quickly muted by the part of her that drew pleasure from it, from the panic darkening Kira’s eyes and turning her face pale, from the flicker of fear that she tried so hard to hide.

“I’m not her,” she snarled, over and over, and even she wasn’t sure any more who she was talking about. The lost and lonely Jadzia from the other universe, the shy and scared little girl cowering in the corners of her mind, or the weak-willed wannabe host who still couldn’t keep a psychopathic past life under control. Maybe all of them; she supposed it didn’t matter, because those words were the only ones she could hear now, the only ones she could speak, the only ones that made any kind of sense at all. “I’m not her, I’m not her. I’m not _her_.”

“Neither am I,” Kira choked.

She summoned her own reserves of inner strength, recovering herself and becoming that fierce guerrilla fighter that Dax had seen in action so many times. When she shoved Dax away from her, it wasn’t with any of the gentleness she’d been so free to display thus far; it was forceful and violent, everything Dax had wanted from her, everything she craved. She drove her back, step by step, until her back hit the window, and when their eyes met again, they were both breathing as hard and as raggedly as each other.

“I’m not her,” Kira repeated, but _her_ was all Dax could see. “I’m not the Intendant. I’m not the—”

Dax punched her in the mouth.

The blow connected, hard, but Kira was past the point of being surprised. Her own survival instincts had kicked in the moment Dax had taken her by the throat, and if Dax had been thinking clearly she would have known better than to expect that she would go down as easily as that. Her head snapped back, but Dax barely had the chance to relish the impact before she found herself staggering back against the window, half-blind, spitting blood and curses as she cradled the side of her face.

Kira wasn’t the Intendant, she realised hazily, though she was sure she knew that already. The Intendant, like Joran, took as much pleasure from her own pain as anyone else’s, so long as the source remained under her heel, obedient and controlled. When she’d beaten Dax to within an inch of her life after that unpleasant altercation in her quarters, it was because Dax had been stupid enough to exert herself. Dax had assaulted her without permission, and it was that insurgence that had brought the retaliation out in her, not the violence itself. Quite the contrary; when Dax was violent at her behest, she encouraged it, enjoying it and driving Dax to enjoy it too. She pushed Dax’s buttons, pulled her strings, bringing out that violence and thriving on it, and that was the crucial difference. She may have been the one marred by blood and bruises, but it was entirely by her own design, and that made it all the more pleasurable. Even when Dax was the one throwing punches and strangling, hands at her throat and knees driving into her ribs, the Intendant — like Joran — was always the one in control.

This Kira, Major Kira, wasn’t like that at all. Violence wasn’t something to thrive on, or to derive pleasure from; at best it was a threat, at worst a risk to her life. A lifetime’s worth of struggling under the Cardassian occupation had trained a vicious fighter’s instinct in her, and she would not think twice before using it in a situation like this. She would never invite Dax to strike her, would never invite her fury or her hatred like the Intendant did; she couldn’t even understand the thrill of it in the safety of the holosuite. This Kira would not stand back and let herself be assaulted, under any circumstances and by anyone. Dax’s reasoning didn’t matter, and neither did their slow-burning friendship; even her questionable sanity wasn’t relevant right now. Nothing mattered but the pure physicality of it: friend or foe, if anyone was stupid enough to strike a blow against Major Kira, then Major Kira would not hesitate to strike back.

That, of course, was just fuel to Dax’s fury. She was more Joran than Jadzia now, more violence than vindication, and though she could remember every second of her time on Terok Nor as though it were still happening, she couldn’t remember at all what had made her so angry in this moment, here and now and with a Kira who was not the Intendant. She couldn’t remember what had compelled her to lash out, to strike her simply for meaning well, to bruise and bloody her friend, her confidante, her Nerys. She couldn’t remember what had triggered the rage at all, only what had come of it, and right now now it was all she had and all she was.

Anger. Violence. Bloodlust. Rage. It wasn’t even hatred this time; there was nothing cohesive, no reason or rationality, just a blazing burning need to inflict pain, to pour herself out through her fists, to beat the compassion out of Kira, to beat the shy and stupid little girl out of herself to beat everything she could get her hands on, until the world felt as angry as she did, until Bajor was tainted once more with the force of someone else’s fury, until the walls of this happy little house were smeared as dark with blood as the stone walls in in the rebel cave. She wanted to put her hands around Kira’s neck just like she had to the Intendant, wanted to to break her own wrist just like she’d broken Jadzia’s, she wanted…

_…Jadzia._

Dax choked on the memory of her name, her face, her _self_. For just a second it, wasn’t Kira standing in front of her; it wasn’t the Intendant, wasn’t Nerys, wasn’t the hollow-chested Kira of her dreams, the one that had whispered forgiveness for all the times Dax had killed her. For just a single heartbreaking second, she was staring down at Jadzia, the other Jadzia, the one who had chosen exile, the one who was so afraid of her hallucinations, the lost and lonely Jadzia that Dax had left alone. Jadzia, trapped inside her thoughts, lost to a symbiont she didn’t want. Jadzia, who hated herself, who hated _Dax_ … and Dax, who had left her.

It was just a second, barely even that, but it was enough. It was enough to blind her, enough to tear her away from this place, this room, this Bajor, enough to send her stumbling, enough to knock the breath out of her and drive her down to her to her knees, enough to floor her, a kick in the chest that landed far harder and far more powerfully than anything either version of Kira could hope to do.

Kira’s fighting instincts extended far beyond the strength of her fists. They told her when to stop, too, and she was already halfway to lowering her arms even before Dax had faltered. She had sensed the shift in her posture, the tension suddenly bleeding out of her, and she had realised without so much as a word between them that something was about to change, that this wasn’t a fight any more, that Dax had just been struck by something far more potent than a punch. She read her opponent’s body language with all the quick-thinking precision of an expert, and knew that it was safe to retreat almost before Dax had stopped coming at her. Dax hated that, hated how easily Kira could see through her, hated her fighting instincts, hated that she was so easy to read.

It was over. It was over, and she didn’t want it to be over. Kira crouched beside her, and Dax wanted nothing more than to surge up again, but she couldn’t. It was over, and she hated that too.

“Dax?”

Learning from her mistakes, Kira didn’t touch her this time, and for once she made the effort not to call her ‘Jadzia’. She just crouched there, close but without contact, frowning and waiting for Dax to come back to her, or even just to come back to herself, to remember who and where she was, to fall out of her own head, look around, and remember that she was safe and she was out of that place, that she was home.

It was such a simple thing to hope for, wasn’t it? For someone like Kira, someone who couldn’t understand what it meant for a Trill to be lost inside their own head, what it meant for someone who had so many identities to drown in without the added struggle of separating her good friend from a twisted tyrant. For someone like Kira, who knew war, who knew violence, who flattered herself she knew what kind of savagery Dax had endured. Kira knew trauma, Kira knew pain, Kira knew unspeakable horrors, and it was all so simple when it was put like that. _It’s over. You’re home, you’re safe, you’re home. Why are you still shaking?_

Dax knew too well the cost of coming home. Garak’s face was the price for keeping it a secret, for hiding it away from the Intendant. Keiko’s life was the toll for her freedom, a life taken so that she might run away, such a high cost for cowardice. Jadzia’s sanity was the token to be paid for the journey back here, and Dax’s soul was what she’d given to survive it all. Home, yes, but at what cost? Home, sure, but how much damage had been done so that she might get here?

How much more blood would be shed now that she’d finally made it back? What further suffering would be wrought in the other universe following her departure? How much of it had she brought back with her? She shook her head, disbelief coloured by madness. How could Kira possibly expect her to take comfort in being home when it had cost her so much to get here? How could she possibly think that being home meant being safe? How could she think that anything was safe? Nothing was safe, and Dax didn’t know what home was. How could Kira claim to know her when she didn’t even know that?

Still, she raised her head and met her worried gaze, the smouldering ashes of burned-out eyes that were not the Intendant’s and the warmth of a Bajor that knew the value of freedom. She felt the orange heat of the setting sun pierce her from beyond the window, and she wished that she could appreciate the beauty of it. She wished she could be the Dax that Kira thought she knew.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, speaking to all those people who were not there, and ignoring the one person who was. “I’m sorry.”

Though she hadn’t intended it as one, Kira nonetheless took the apology as an invitation to inch a little closer. She shuffled unsteadily on her haunches, holding out a hand and letting it hover between them, an offer but not a demand. She still didn’t try to touch Dax with it, or encourage her to take it, no doubt afraid of another unwarranted outburst if she pushed too far, but she held it outstretched just the same, letting Dax take it if she wanted or ignore it if she didn’t. Small steps, tiny gestures, one breath at a time.

Dax didn’t take her hand, but she didn’t ignore it either. She stared at it for a moment, studying and blinking, like she couldn’t remember what that kind of gesture was supposed to mean, then promptly turned away to look back towards the window, gazing blindly out at the fading sunlight.

“Tell me again that she didn’t take you,” Kira murmured; her voice was soft and low, but it carried an edge as keen as razor wire. “Tell me again that she didn’t hurt you. Tell me again that I’m wrong.”

Dax didn’t turn back, but she didn’t hesitate either. “You’re wrong,” she said again, voice clear and strong. “You’re so wrong I don’t know where to start. You have no idea. You have no idea how wrong you are…”

Kira took a deep, tremulous breath; Dax heard it catch in her chest and her throat. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she said; there was a kind of awe in the way she spoke, but it was far from reverent. “Even before all of this, when you were so afraid of yourself… even when you were wasting every second you could steal in that Prophets-forsaken holosuite… even then, you weren’t like this. I’ve never seen you lose control like that, Dax. I’ve never seen you so angry and so scared at the same time. You can’t do what you just did and expect me to believe that nothing happened out there.”

“I didn’t say nothing happened,” Dax said, very quietly. “I said you’re wrong. I said you’re assuming things that aren’t true. I said you’re stupid. But I never said nothing happened.”

Kira threw up her hands, crying out in irrepressible frustration; Dax, who still hadn’t quite managed to curb her anger, couldn’t deny the small pulse of excitement that sparked in the base of her spine at the sight, the thrill of something else she’d thought she left behind on Terok Nor, the flicker of everything Kira didn’t want to believe and everything Dax knew was true.

“By the Prophets, Dax!” Kira shouted, sounding almost pained. “Stop talking in riddles and just talk to me! Don’t I deserve that? Haven’t I earned it after everything I did for you? I let you go. I kept my mouth shut. I carried the weight of where you were and what you’d done all on my own for a week, Dax, and without so much as a word from you. I came here and I tried to make my peace with the Prophets, but all I could think of was you. Were you all right? Were you even alive? What would happen if you weren’t? I let you go because you asked me to, and I had to carry that around my neck for a week until you showed up out of nowhere on my bedroom floor. After all that, don’t you think one damned conversation is the least you can give me in return?”

Dax swallowed, remembering Garak with his bruise-mottled face, Keiko with her dirt-smudged terror, Jadzia with her infatuated idealism. She thought of everyone, each of them a fresh crater of devastation she’d carved out in her blood-soaked path of good intentions. All she’d wanted was to help, but everyone she had touched, she’d hurt.

Everyone but one person.

“Jadzia…”

“Intendant.”

Dax choked on something wet, a sob or a whimper, a plea for mercy or a plea for more; even she wasn’t sure, but the sound of it seemed to startle Kira into turning a shade or two paler.

“What did she do to you?” she asked again. in a voice that said, for the first time, she didn’t know if she wanted to hear it. “By the Prophets… what could she possibly have done to make you like this?”

Dax shook her head. “You didn’t do anything to me,” she said, voice hollow and empty; she wasn’t entirely sure whether she was speaking to the Kira who was there in the room with her or the one that she’d left far behind. “But oh, the things I did to you…”

It was a sob, and a whimper. It was mercy and more, pleasure and pain. It was everything, but suddenly she wasn’t choking on it any more. Suddenly it was in the back of her throat, the back of her mouth, underneath her tongue. Suddenly it was right there, on the air, and she couldn’t take it back, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t do anything but hear it and feel it and let it go. A whimper and a sob, a gasp and a moan, a plea and a promise. A name. More important than anything else, a name.

“… _Nerys_.”

Kira looked nauseous. She tried to mask it, just as she always tried to cover over any sign of weakness, but Dax could see through her as surely as looking through glass. She could see the flicker of fear, the unease and discomfort, and she felt a flush of pride at having caused it. She’d been so sure that the Intendant was the evil one, that she alone was capable of terrible things; she’d been so sure, so certain, so unwilling to allow any other option, and it gave Dax a jolt of quiet satisfaction to see the flash of panic in her eyes, the unwitting realisation that maybe Dax was capable of those things too, that maybe she’d been right all along to be afraid of herself… that maybe, just maybe, all that precious faith had been misplaced.

Still, though, she resisted. “You’re projecting,” she managed at last, though the words did little to banish the shadow of fear behind her eyes. “You’re projecting whatever she did back onto yourself. You think it’ll hurt less if you’re responsible. You’re trying to take the blame for… you’re trying to…” She cursed, hushed and furious. “You’re such a damn martyr, Dax. You always have been.”

Dax shook her head, tried to shake out the echoes of Joran, his voice lodged in her throat. She felt so much like him in that moment, so volatile and unstable, so close to dangerous. She was still riding the adrenaline of her outburst, the thrill of pain itching under her knuckles and throbbing beneath her eye, where Kira had struck her back, a fresh shade of bruising to cover over the ones already there. She could still feel the urge humming inside of her, and it took everything she had to keep from giving in to it again, from driving in deep with the truth until Kira begged for mercy, from wringing out the details until she begged her to stop, until she had no choice but to believe her.

“No,” she said, and the simplicity and clarity of the confession cut through the edges of Joran’s influence, a reminder of who she was and why she wanted so desperately for the Kira in front of her to turn around and hate what she had become. “I’m not ‘projecting’ anything. You want to know what happened? There it is. She’s not to blame. I am. I’m to blame, I’m responsible, and if you have to point your finger at someone, then go right ahead and point it at me.”

Kira’s jaw trembled, but her eyes remained dry. “Dax…”

“No.” The word cut so deep that it silenced the twisted thing inside of her, if only for a moment. “She’s just like him, Nerys. She is _just like him_.” She didn’t need to clarify; the look on Kira’s face made it clear that she knew exactly what she was telling her, who ‘she’ was and who ‘he’ was. “They’re both so angry all the time. It’s all they do, hate and hurt. It’s all they want, all they do… and they were so… they were so good for each other. He fed on her, and she fed on him, but I was the one who did it. All of it, me. And I… I don’t even know any more which part of me was the part that enjoyed it.”

“Dax.” Kira’s voice was tighter now, a little more urgent.

Dax ignored her, pushing past her pleas with feverish desperation. “But I do know that I _did_ ,” she said. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I don’t know which part of me felt that way, but I know that I did. I enjoyed it. I really, truly did. When I got angry, and she was… when we were… the things we did between those sheets… I…”

In seven lifetimes, Dax had never been coy about sharing details of the most intimate nature, but now for the first time she tripped and stumbled and blushed, shaking her head when she couldn’t say it, and biting blood from her lip when Kira paled again. “Jadzia, don’t.”

“It felt good. It felt so good, Nerys.” There was that name again, the woman she didn’t want to remember. “I didn’t… I didn’t want to enjoy it, but it felt so good. I couldn’t… I couldn’t…”

Again, she remembered. Her hands at the Intendant’s throat, bruises and choking gasps, strangling, hips hitching, whimpers and moans and a broken, devastating scream. _Pleasure_. She felt it now, just as she had then, a sharp jolt that turned her thighs slick even as it turned her face away, turned her to the window where it was safe, where she could bathe in the sunlight and let it flood her.

And yet, even as she turned, still she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop feeling it now any more than she had then, and she couldn’t stop the torrent of words, couldn’t stop blurting it all out out in a halting confession any more than she could have stopped her body from finding its release then. She was as helpless to the whims of this Nerys as she had ever been to the Intendant. 

“I tried…” she whispered. “I tried so hard to stop, to stop feeling it, to stop enjoying it, to stop wanting it. I tried so hard, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop, and I… at the end, I don’t think I even wanted to.” She choked on a sob, but refused to let the tears fall. “And I don’t know what part of me that was. I couldn’t tell you if it was Joran or Curzon or Emony, or even… or even Jadzia. I just know that it was me. It was _me_. I did it, and I enjoyed it.”

For a very long moment, all Kira could do was stare at her. Her features were a maelstrom of conflicting feelings; she looked like she’d never seen Dax before in her life, like she was a complete stranger, like she had betrayed everything she’d ever believed in. She looked like she wanted nothing more than to turn around and run away, to run from Dax, from the conversation, from everything that had happened. She looked trapped, helpless… and yet, through all that, Dax could see just a hint of that same Nerys who had held her in that runabout. Somewhere behind all that conflict, she could see that Nerys, those beautiful Bajoran eyes and the heart that was too big for the horrors she’d lived through.

She didn’t want to believe it. Even now, even with the words out there and Dax’s face streaked with tears of raw honesty, still it seemed there was a part of her that wanted to shrug the whole thing off, to turn around and insist that Dax was in denial, that she was ‘projecting’, that she didn’t know what she was saying, that she would say anything she could think of just to make the pain less. She wanted so desperately to believe that it wasn’t true, that Dax was the victim and the Intendant the villain, that everything was black and white and simple, good and evil, right and wrong… she wanted so desperately to believe all that, and Dax felt her heart break to watch the struggle play itself out on her face like a holo-drama.

The tension between them grew unbearable, and Kira still didn’t speak. Maybe she was afraid to speak, or maybe she couldn’t. Either way, she made no effort to break the silence, even as it stretched beyond either of their endurance. She just swung to her feet, as restless as a caged animal, and started to pace. Dax watched as she did, feeling a tug in her chest, just behind her lungs. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d been the one pacing. Back and forth and back and forth, the length of a tiny alien cockpit more times she could count, losing herself in the rhythm of footsteps even as her mind threatened to break down. She watched, wondering if Kira felt like that now, if she was feeling the same sense of dull shock that Dax had gone through after Keiko died. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth…

She thought about standing, about joining her. She thought of that endless rhythm, the comfort it brought, and wanted to join in. She wanted to, but she didn’t; she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her weight if she tried, and she didn’t want the attention anyway. This was Kira’s moment, and it wasn’t Dax’s place to invade. Besides, given the choice she would have curled up right there on the floor, huddled in on herself until she was invisible, wrapped her host’s body around the symbiont inside it and shielded them both, hiding and cowering until Kira forgot she was there, until she finally left her alone like she’d asked her to.

They weren’t going to resolve all of this in one conversation, no matter how stubbornly militant Kira was about it, and Dax was too damn exhausted to deal with so much fallout right now. She just wanted to be alone. She wanted to be locked up and hidden away, out of sight and out of mind, somewhere that she could exist without hurting anyone, trapped with her regrets, her guilt and her shame and the knowledge of what she’d done. That would be penance, wouldn’t it? Complete isolation for the rest of her life, for the rest of Dax’s future lives, alone but for the phantasms that came when she dreamed. Why couldn’t Kira grant her that? Why couldn’t she run away from this like she so obviously wanted to? Why was she still here?

After what seemed like an eternity, Kira turned back to her. Dax wanted to scream, to throw her towards the door, to demand that she leave, but she didn’t have the strength to see it through. Besides, Kira looked so troubled, so agonised by what she was seeing here, by what she was learning of the friend she’d been stupid enough to put her faith in, that it seemed unjustly cruel to hurt her like that as well. Maybe there was still some shred of compassion left in her after all.

“I told you not to go,” Kira said at last, for the hundredth time, softer now but with a depth of intensity that hurt to hear. Her eyes were still dry, but they shone like sunlight, rippling and bright. “I told you not to go there. I… dammit, Jadzia!”

“Don’t,” Dax shot back. “Don’t call me that, and don’t say that. Not again. Dammit, Major, you know why I went there. You know why I had to go. You know I…” It was almost a relief to think about Jadzia after so much time thinking about the Intendant, about Terok Nor, about Joran and the violent hateful thing festering inside of her. “She was alone. She was completely alone, and she had no-one. I was the only thing she had. There was no-one else, nothing else… nothing…” She bit her lip, but there was no blood left to draw out of it. “What the hell was I supposed to do, Kira?”

Kira swore under her breath, a string of grated-out Bajoran obscenities that Dax neglected to mention she understood perfectly well. “It wasn’t your problem,” she muttered when she was done. “You were supposed to realise that, and walk away. You were supposed to use all that Starfleet training of yours and not get involved. That’s what you were supposed to do. It wasn’t your problem.”

“Really?” Dax countered. “You’re going to play that card? You, of all people?” She shook her head, inexplicably bitter. “Do you really expect me to believe that you wouldn’t do the same thing in the same position? If someone needed you — only you, no-one else — do you really expect me to believe you’d just walk away and leave them in pain?”

“That’s not the point,” Kira shot back, flushing angrily.

“I think it is.” Dax was flushed too, just as heated as Kira. “I think it’s exactly the point. You couldn’t leave a soul in pain any more than I could, no matter who she was or how dangerous it was.”

“I’d leave her,” Kira said, quietly vehement. “I’d leave the Intendant. She’d deserve whatever she got.”

Dax closed her eyes against the flood of memories, the flood of _Nerys_ on her tongue, and willed herself to think of Jadzia. “I couldn’t let her suffer alone. I couldn’t let her go through that alone. I couldn’t…” She braced herself for a second or two, then pressed on. “That’s all there is to it. I couldn’t let her suffer with no-one there to help her, or even just hold her hand. I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t. And you can tell me all you want that I shouldn’t have gone, but it’s not going to change anything. I did go. I went, and if I had to do it again…”

But she couldn’t finish. She couldn’t say _‘I would’_ , because in that moment she wasn’t entirely sure that it was true. Hindsight was a very precious thing — Dax had learned that more times than she could count over seven lifetimes, even if young Jadzia was still struggling to figure it out for herself — and it was different now, knowing as she couldn’t have known before just how much damage her presence would do. It made the whole thing very complicated. It was hard to think of doing it all again, hard to look at herself and imagine having the inner strength to put herself through it all willingly, to cause so much pain, to destroy so much, all for the sake of one lost soul that she hadn’t been able to save anyway.

She still felt so guilty for having left Jadzia, for having abandoned her without sticking around to see her made whole, or even to see her undone completely and know that the weight of that fell on her as well. She had taken on so much and left it all half-finished, and though she knew in her heart that she’d done all she could, that there really was nothing more she could do for her, it still cut deep to turn her back and walk away. She had given Jadzia hope, had given her faith, and then she had turned around and stripped it away, just as she’d stripped Keiko of her hope for a better life and then stripped her of what little life she’d had.

“Look,” she went on, struggling against herself. “I went. It’s done. You can say _‘I told you so’_ a hundred times, but it won’t change anything. So just stop now. Please. Just stop.”

For the first time, she saw a flash of something like helplessness on Kira’s face. Not confusion or fear, not even frustration, but genuine helplessness. She had to blink and squint at her to be sure that it was what she thought it was, that she wasn’t simply misinterpreting some other feeling, because it looked so strange and uncharacteristic, so unlike the Kira she thought she knew, so unlike any of them. Dax had never seen this Kira look anything other than aggressively militant; quiet fury and outspoken indignation were the staples for any conversation with her, and Dax had long ago grown comfortable with her natural prickliness. It didn’t really matter if they were talking about Bajoran politics or holosuite simulations; Kira was Kira, and she was nothing if not predictable.

The Intendant was very similar. Though she’d lacked a little of Kira’s ferocity, the fire of a lifetime’s worth of oppression blazing away in her chest, she had nonetheless shared her passion and her pride. It didn’t matter that they felt such different things and in such different places, because they felt them in very similar ways. The Intendant felt as passionately about what she did as Major Kira did about Bajor and her people’s struggles; they had come from vastly different worlds and lived vastly different lives, but their feelings still resonated in the same way. There was no such thing as helplessness with either one of them, and once again their identical faces blurred for a moment into a single vision before Dax’s eyes.

No version of Kira Nerys would wear that look, and the sight of it sent a chill up Dax’s spine.

“I don’t know what else to say,” Kira managed at last, and all that helplessness had made her voice thick and ragged. “I don’t know how to talk to you when you’re like this. I don’t know how to reach you.” She closed the space between them, dropping to her knees at Dax’s side once more, and this time she did touch her, the backs of her fingers tracing the clenching lines of her jaw, both trembling but for completely different reasons. “You’re just so far away…”

In spite of herself Dax leaned into the touch. She closed her eyes, remembering again, and wondered if it was shame or solace that she felt. “I know,” she sighed. “But when I’m not, I’m _here_. And that’s worse.”

“Is it really so awful being home?” Kira asked quietly.

“No.” She exhaled shakily, opened her eyes and looked deep into Kira’s, whoever Kira was right now. “But this is hard. You and me. Us.” Her jaw trembled harder as she tried to breathe. “You’re not her. I know that. But I don’t… I can’t…” She shook her head. “I don’t remember what it’s supposed to feel like. Being here. Being home. Being with you. I don’t remember. I don’t remember how to… how to be something that isn’t twisted and wrong. I don’t remember how to look at you and not think of all the things I did with you… to you… all the things that happened, all the…” She choked, cutting herself off before she could confess too much. “I don’t remember what we are, what we used to be. I don’t remember _us_ , Nerys, and I don’t remember you.”

Kira let her hand fall from Dax’s face. Her eyes were bright, taking in the sunlight as it refracted off the window pane, dazzling and beautiful, but all Dax could see was that helplessness. Helplessness, and that wasn’t the Kira she knew; it wasn’t Nerys, it wasn’t the Intendant, it was something completely different, something strange and new, a Kira she had never seen before, a Kira she didn’t know in a world that didn’t feel like home.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t do anything at all as Kira leaned in, steadying herself against the floor as she pressed her lips to the skin abandoned by her fingertips, depthless faith to counteract the helplessness, new and strange and _Nerys_ , her name a wordless promise etched breathlessly against Dax’s cheek, her temples, her forehead, tenderness that cut so much deeper than blood or bruises.

“So let me help you,” she whispered, breath warm over Dax’s cool skin. “Let me help you remember.”


	35. Chapter 35

“Everyone wants to help me…”

The words came out far more bitterly than she’d intended. Kira recoiled as though she’d been struck again, and it took all the meagre self-control that Dax had left to keep from taking it all back and apologising. She didn’t regret saying it, or even feeling it, but it was painful to watch Kira flinch, painful to see someone so strong and so powerful so affected by someone else’s words.

In a strange sort of way, she suspected that Kira would almost have preferred if she really had struck her instead; at least then she would be justified in hitting back. Aggression was a language they both understood all too well; they were both more comfortable exchanging blows than words, even when they knew just as well that it wouldn’t work.

Kira had told her once that words were a coward’s weapon. She’d spoken with venom on her tongue, snarling curses about Cardassians, about the way they tried to hide their dirty deeds behind empty words and shattered promises. _“Gul Dukat,”_ she’d said, spitting the name. Given the choice, Dax knew that Kira preferred real confrontation, open and honest with everything in plain sight. Dax preferred that too, most of the time, but she’d tried that already here and the only outcome had been pain for them both.

Besides, she had wielded violence for long enough by now. Maybe there was something to be said for picking up a coward’s weapon instead.

When she’d recovered herself a little, Kira mustered the dignity to roll her eyes. “And by ‘everyone’, I assume you mean Bareil and myself?” she quipped, and quirked a brow. “It’s not like you have a whole quadrant’s worth of bleeding hearts knocking on your door, is it?”

Dax rolled her eyes right back, scowling. “You’re pushy enough that it might as well be,” she complained, then softened, suddenly aware of how close Kira’s face was to her own, and how potent Bareil’s presence felt in the meagre space between them. “He’s a good man,” she added, an afterthought that tasted of regret. “He’s a very good man.”

Kira coughed delicately, leaning back with an odd look on her face. “He is,” she agreed. “And he’s a good vedek, too.”

Dax thought about their conversation in the garden, about the way Bareil had known what to say and how to say it, how he’d known that the greatest gift he had to offer was his inability to understand. “I know he is,” she said, very quietly.

Kira studied her; she looked strange, like she wanted something but didn’t quite know what. “You should think about talking to him,” she murmured, sounding almost wretched. “If you really can’t talk to me. If it’s really too painful for you… if you won’t let me help you, Jadzia, you really should think about letting him try.”

“I don’t want to let him try.” Dax was angry again, but but she wasn’t entirely sure why; it was a thoughtful and generous suggestion, and it clearly pained her a great deal to admit aloud that she might not be what Dax needed just now, and yet something about the look on her face made Dax’s skin itch with unpleasant belligerence. She cracked her knuckles to keep from punching the floor, and took a slow, steadying breath. “I don’t want to talk to either of you. I just want you both to leave me alone.”

“I know you do,” Kira pressed. “But—”

“No.” She sighed. “You’re right about Bareil. He is a good vedek, and he is a good man. But you… you’re not good. You’re not helping, and you’re not good.” Kira flinched again, upset. “Bareil understands. He understands that I need to be alone, and he doesn’t try and force himself on me. He’d never come in here if I hadn’t invited him. He understands, Nerys. He—”

“Maybe,” Kira said with a shrug. “Maybe he does understand why you want to be alone. Maybe he does understand spiritual healing and solitude better than me… but he doesn’t understand you. He doesn’t know Jadzia Dax. He doesn’t know you, and he doesn’t understand what you’re going through. He doesn’t—”

“Do you really think that’s comforting?” Resisting the urge was pointless now, and Dax did punch the floor, once and then a second time, grunting at the impact and taking a moment before she trusted herself to speak again. “Do you really think I want you to understand me? Do you really think I want your empathy or your sympathy or whatever other soft feelings you’ve picked up since the occupation ended?” She laughed, raw and rasping, and struck the floor a third time. “I don’t want you to understand me. I don’t want you to… to…”

Kira took her hands, stopping her before she had a chance to lash out again. “…to what?” she asked, ever so gently.

Dax bit her lip, wringing out a drop or two of blood from between the cracks, rich and heady and so familiar by now that it tasted almost like air. “I called your name.”

Kira frowned, clearly not seeing what that had to do with the question. “All right…”

“I called your name,” Dax said again, lost in memory. “The door was right there, and she would have let me leave. She would’ve let me go without another word. She didn’t need me to stay. I don’t think she even really wanted me to. And I know she would have let me leave if I’d tried to, if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t try to. I stayed. I stayed, and I… I…”

She closed her eyes, pulling her hands free of Kira’s gentle grasp. She didn’t strike the floor again this time, just turned away, moving with her whole body so that no part of her was facing Kira. Shaking, she hunched over the symbiont in her belly, arms wrapped tightly around it, squeezing hard; she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to protect or punish it, but it didn’t really matter. She had to reassure herself that it was there, that it was still inside her; she didn’t know why, but it felt so important.

“I called her ‘Nerys’,” she finished at last, a desperate confession in less than a whisper. “Just once. The last time. I called her ‘Nerys’, and I let myself pretend she was.”

Behind her, Kira let out a weary-sounding sigh. “Do you want me to be angry at you for that?” she asked, and Dax hated how obvious it was, how transparent her pain. “Is that it? You think you abused my trust or tainted our friendship or something, and you want me to yell at you for it?”

Dax heard the rustle as she shifted, and bit down again on her lip in search of a little more blood. “I want…” she started, but couldn’t stomach the thought of being allowed to want anything.

“I can, if that’s what you want,” Kira offered. “I can yell and scream if it’ll make you feel better. I can tell you how much you’ve betrayed me, how much it hurts. I can even throw things if you think it’ll help. But we both know it won’t be the truth.”

“I should’ve gone,” Dax murmured to herself, so distant and so lost. “I should have just turned around and walked away. If I’d just left when I was supposed to, she wouldn’t have… she never would have…” She was rambling now, feverish and delirious, but she couldn’t stop. “If I hadn’t been so… if I hadn’t wanted… if she hadn’t made me think of you and want her…”

“Dax.” Kira’s voice was rough, almost urgent.

But Dax was still drowning, and she barely heard her. “If I’d just gone… if I’d just turned around and left, I would’ve got her out of there. She wouldn’t have known… she wouldn’t have figured out… if I’d just gone, if I’d just left, I would’ve got to her in time. I would have… if I’d just _gone_ …”

“What are you talking about?”

There was an urgency in Kira now as she took her by the shoulders, like she knew this was something very serious, like she realised it was about so much more than her name. She was gentle but forceful as her fingers dug into Dax’s skin, moving her back around until she was facing her again. Dax hunched more protectively over her abdomen, resisting, but Kira cupped her jaw and tilted her head up.

“I should’ve left…” she whispered, hating the sight of her own face reflected in Kira’s eyes. “I should’ve left…”

“Jadzia.” Though her eyes were damp, Kira’s voice was clear and strong. “You’re not making any sense. Slow down. Tell me what happened.”

Dax tried to turn away again, to hide her face and hide herself, but Kira held her firmly in place, gripping her shoulders again and shaking her. The strength in her hands was bracing, and she drew some courage from the violence of the motion, head snapping back and teeth clattering together. Not enough violence to awaken the hunger in her, but just enough to bite, a grounding soreness that felt good.

Kira watched as she steadied herself. Her eyes were bright and dangerous, aflame with the kind of ferocity that the Intendant loved so much but never seemed to really feel inside herself, the blind rage that she lit up and abused so easily in Dax, the anger that she took such pleasure in because she didn’t understand what it was really like. As hard as she’d tried to drag the fury out of Dax again and again, she’d never shown any sign of it in herself. She’d been angry sometimes, yes, and especially when she thought she’d been wronged, but it was nothing like this. Nothing like Dax’s violence, and nothing like the unfettered ferocity that she saw in Kira’s eyes now.

Where the Intendant’s eagerness was seductive, Kira’s passion was simply overwhelming. It struck like a lightning bolt, a flash of fury passing over the chaos in her head, lining up and setting fire to all the Dax hosts, one by one, igniting all the thoughts and feelings and memories in her head, even Joran’s. It lit them all up, putting them in perfect sync for just a moment, one breathtaking moment of almost-clarity, one blissful and beautiful moment when there was no chaos and no confusion, one impossible moment where there was nothing in her head at all, nothing but her, nothing but them. Nothing but Nerys, and—

“Jadzia.”

It was in her voice, too, and Dax was just as helpless against the sound as she was to the lightning cracking behind her eyes; there was no shelter from either of them, and she didn’t know whether to be frightened or grateful. It jolted inside her, an explosion that caught and illuminated every corner inside of her, revealing even the worst of it, burning bright until she couldn’t hide anything, until it was all there on display, vivid and impossible to conceal.

“She killed her.”

Her voice hitched as she said it, and she looked away before she could see Kira’s jaw drop, pulling free from her grasp before she could feel the shaking in her fingers, whirling around so she could block her out entirely and pretend that she was alone.

“Jadzia.”

“Don’t!” The anguish tightened her throat, made it even harder to get the words out. “Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t say her name like it’s mine. Don’t say it like I deserve it. She’s dead because of me. She’s dead because I wasn’t good enough, because I wasn’t strong enough, because I didn’t leave when I should have, because I…” She choked. “Because I was in her bed, fucking her and thinking of you, when I should have been leaving.”

Kira took her by the shoulders again, spun her back around, forced her to face her. “You’re not making any sense,” she said, stammering and stumbling, like she knew the nonsense was safer than the alternative.

“She killed her,” Dax said again, vehement. “She killed her because I didn’t leave. I stayed, and she saw and she knew. She knew, because I let her. Because I didn’t leave, because I stayed, because I let her inside me.” She bit her lip, wishing it would hurt more than it did. “She would have let me go. She would’ve let me leave, if that was what I wanted, and I… I said I would, but I didn’t. I stayed. I stayed, and I fucked her and I thought of you, and I called your name. _I called your name._ And she knew… she knew…”

“Dax.”

Kira was holding her tightly now, hands framing her face on either side. No doubt she thought that the contact would ground her, that the sight of a familiar face would remind her that she was safe and home, that the sight of _her_ face would remind her of who they were. In another moment, it might have worked; if it had been Jadzia that Dax was thinking of now, perhaps it would have. But she wasn’t; she was thinking of the Intendant, and it seemed that Kira had forgotten that her face was the Intendant’s as well too. It was neither comforting nor grounding to see her now, and it definitely did not make Dax think of home. It made her think of sex, of want and lust, of a final tumble, of one last chance, of a woman she called ‘Nerys’ but who was someone else entirely.

“She killed her,” she repeated, staring into the eyes of the woman who had done it. “She had her killed because of me. She had her killed, because she knew I cared.”

“Jadzia?” Kira asked, and it took Dax a moment to realise that for once she was talking about the other one, that she had fundamentally misunderstood, that she thought… “Are you trying to tell me that the Intendant killed Jadzia?”

“No.” She tried to shake her head, but Kira held her too firmly. “No, you… you don’t… why don’t you…”

“Then who?” Kira asked. “Who did she kill? What happened?”

But Dax couldn’t process the words, couldn’t shape the facts into something she might understand. How could Kira not know? She was there, wasn’t she? She was the one who’d ordered it done! How could she be looking at her like that now, so wide-eyed and innocent, so much like Nerys? How could she look at her like that and pretend she didn’t know? How could she pretend she wasn’t responsible?

She wanted to feel angry, but she was in too much pain. Her heart and her soul were sick, and her face was cold and pale, tears slipping between slender Bajoran fingers, terrorist’s fingers, Intendant’s fingers. It hurt, not in the comforting physical way that bloodshed and bruises hurt, but deep inside, in a place that even the symbiont couldn’t touch, a place that was neither Dax nor Jadzia.

“She was right,” she heard herself mumble, discordant and remote. “She was right. I should have learned. She was a teacher… I should have learned…”

“A teacher…” Dimly, she heard Kira suck in her breath as the realisation struck. “…Mrs O’Brien?”

Dax choked, forcing back a ragged sob. She felt like her chest was caving in, unimaginable pressure bearing down on her ribs, her lungs, and what little remained of her heart, like the dual weight of grief and guilt were coming together to try and crush her. The name still held power, even here, even back in this universe where everything was fine, even in this place that was supposed to be home. Even here, it seemed, she only needed to hear the name and she was right back there again.

“She killed her…” she whispered again, and let the sob break free.

At long last, Kira released Dax’s face, leaning back to squeeze the ridges at the bridge of her nose; she looked exhausted, like she could feel the pain radiating out from Dax and was unwittingly sharing it.

“All right,” she said with a grimace. “Let’s see if I understand what you’re trying to say… which, let’s face it, isn’t the easiest task even when you’re perfectly lucid…” Dax groaned miserably at the flaccid feint at humour; was she that obnoxious when she tried to inject pointless levity into horrible moments? “You’re telling me that the Intendant killed Keiko O’Brien, because you couldn’t keep your libido in check?” 

“I tried to protect her,” Dax forced out, a strangled whimper like a garrotte around her throat; she had to make Kira believe that, had to make her understand. “She… _you_ … you wanted me to tear her down… to take away her hope… but I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it, but you twisted it around… you turned it all upside-down. You made me into your puppet anyway, and I… I wouldn’t stand for that. I wouldn’t let you do it. Not to me, and not to her, and not to any of them. I…”

Kira’s features were hard as stone. “I’m not her,” she said.

Dax swallowed, willed herself to remember that, to believe it, to see the woman in front of her and not the one she remembered, to see Nerys, and know that she really was. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just… you…”

“ _She_ ,” Kira corrected, though the quiet fury shaking through her suggested the distinction was as much for her own sake as it was for Dax’s; she needed to hear it too, to remind herself that she was not the Intendant, and she would not become her. “Not me. _Her_. Say it.”

“She…” Dax swallowed again; it was getting more difficult. “She…”

Kira nodded. “All right,” she said, softening. “All right.”

“She knew,” Dax blurted out again. “She knew. She knew who I was and how I felt. She knew how to get to me. She knew everything. And I was too angry and too… too…”

Kira sighed, distress tangible in every line of her face. “You let her get to you.”

That was it. That was the heart and the soul of everything that had happened on Terok Nor, and it was only in that moment, hearing it spoken for the first time, that Dax realised how simple it was, how agonising and how true. “I let her get to me,” she echoed, like it was a mantra, a Bajoran praying to the Prophets.

“She used you,” Kira said; she was starting to sound angry now, almost dangerously so. “She used you and abused you, hurt you and broke you. She manipulated you, and you were stupid enough to let her. Even though you knew better, even though you were smarter than she was, you let her do it anyway. You just stood there and let her twist you into whatever shape she wanted. And do you know why?”

Dax had a feeling she did know, and far too well, but she shook her head just the same because it was easier than trying to find the strength inside her to say that she did. “Nerys…”

“No.” Her eyes flashed, fingers like vices as they slid back down to grip her shoulders. “You don’t know why, do you? And even if you did, you wouldn’t admit it.” She shook her again, much harder than before. “You shouldn’t have been there in the first place. That’s why.” With a considerable effort, she lowered her voice to a slightly softer level, though the iron strength in her fingers didn’t loosen. “You shouldn’t have gone. It was none of your business, and even if it was, you were in no fit state to deal with anything on that side. By the Prophets, Dax, you were hardly a shining beacon of mental health even before she got her claws into you!”

Dax conceded that with a shrug, slipping out of Kira’s grasp. “I did what I had to do,” she said dully.

“You, did, didn’t you?” Kira sighed. “Of course you did. Because you were too stubborn to walk away, even when you knew it was the right thing to do. You were too stubborn and too arrogant, and too damn stupid. And because of that, you let yourself be used and manipulated by a sociopathic tyrant. You let it happen. You let _her_ happen. All because you did what you ‘had to do’.” She shook her head. “I hope it was worth it.”

She was really angry now, and Dax revelled in that, because she knew that it wouldn’t last. Kira flared up like this often, losing her temper and lashing out and then coming back to herself a moment later, conceding that she might have overreacted and moving swiftly on. Dax thrilled in the anger now, relishing it while she had it. This was what she’d wanted: Kira, angry with her, pointing fingers and yelling, refusing to forgive her for the harm she’d caused, the people she’d hurt and the terrible things she’d done. She’d wanted a Kira who was furious, who took her by the shoulders and shook her until her bones rattled, a Kira who would not let her get away with anything, a Kira who would make sure that she took responsibility for her mistakes. This was what she wanted, a Kira who would not forgive her.

Let Kira blame it all on her fractured state of mind if that made it easier for her to be angry. She didn’t care how she rationalised it just so long as she kept yelling, just so long as she kept casting blame, just so long as she refused to go easy on her. Dax wanted this so desperately. Raised voices and curses hissed through gritted teeth, clenched fists and blood streaking the walls, she wanted it all. She wanted to make a real fight out of this, a trial by fire. She wanted Kira to end her self-flagellation by taking up the whip and offering to do it for her.

“I don’t know,” she said aloud, laying herself down at Kira’s feet, hoping for damnation and not repentance. “I don’t know if it was worth it. I don’t know anything.” She wanted to cry, but just like Kira said, she was too stubborn. “She made me feel the most terrible things. She brought out all those parts of me I’d tried to keep locked up in those holosuites, and I wasn’t strong enough to fight them down. I wasn’t strong enough, or brave enough, or honourable enough. I wasn’t _good_ enough. I wasn’t… I couldn’t…”

Kira was watching her, and Dax felt very small under her scrutiny. “No,” she said, soft and low and deadly. “You couldn’t.”

“You weren’t there,” Dax said, hating the tremors in her voice, her hands, her heart. “You weren’t there to tell me I was better than that. You weren’t there to tell me that I could rise above it, that I could be better, that I could be more, that I could push past what I was feeling and make something better out of myself. You weren’t there to tell me to have faith.” She spread her arms, taking in the room, the window, the sunlight, and Kira herself. “You weren’t there. But she was. And I knew… I know… I knew that she wasn’t you, but she looked just like you. She looked like you, and sounded like you, and when she touched me…” She whimpered, wretched and wanting, even now. “When she put her hands on me, they were yours too. They were your hands, Nerys, and I… I didn’t want to imagine… I didn’t want to pretend… but I…”

“Don’t.” At long last, there were tears in Kira’s eyes too, the blurry haze of wet salt not just in Dax’s own. “I don’t want to hear about it.” Dax recoiled, surprised by the ferocity in her voice, the note of urgency that was nothing like the anger still threaded through them both. “Anything else. Anything. But not that. Not her hands on you. Not that.”

She turned away, and Dax caught the light from the ceiling reflected in water as one of those traitorous tears slid down her face. She wanted to reach out to her, to offer some kind of comfort, to wipe the tear away before it could land on her collarbone, but at the same time, it was a monument to everything she’d hoped for. The anger, the upset, all the things she’d ached to see in Kira’s eyes, and instead of wanting to brush that lone tear away, she found that she wanted to feed it, to bring out more, to do whatever it took to make Kira give up and wash her hands of her completely.

“I’m sorry,” she said, enjoying the taste of the word; apology was a mark of guilt, after all, and she wanted Kira to remember that she was guilty. “What we did… what I did with her…”

“What she did to you,” Kira corrected, characteristically stubborn.

“That’s not what I said,” Dax told her, muscles going whipcord-tight. “And it’s not what happened. You weren’t there, and you don’t have the right to tell me what she did just because you think you know her. You don’t know her, and you don’t know me, either.” She thought of Jadzia again, remembered how she hated the symbiont inside her, how she resented it for its illicit feelings and for the price it had made her pay for them. “They’re not really us,” she said to Kira, thinking of her own symbiont. “And we’re not as much like them as we think we are. Don’t chain yourself to the things she did.”

“I could tell you the same thing,” Kira shot back, still talking about the Intendant and her dirty deeds. “You’re right. I wasn’t there. And you’re right that I can’t presume to tell you what happened to you over there. Only you know that, and I won’t try and take it away from you. But if what you’re telling me has even a shred of truth to it, then she’s the one that killed Keiko. The Intendant. The woman who looks and sounds and feels like me. Her, Jadzia. Not you.”

Dax refused to acknowledge the difference. “What she did, she did because of me. What she did, she did to hurt me, to make me pay for having the courage to stand up to her. She did it because she knew that I cared about… that I knew…”

 _Keiko_. She had thought the name a thousand times since it had happened, but still she could not say it aloud. Still it was too much for her to muster those two syllables, to shape them on her tongue and rend them from her throat. Her body shut down when she tried, nonexistent half-words lodging in her chest and turning her inside-out. Such a simple name. Such a pretty name. _Keiko_. But she could not say it.

“She knew,” she said instead, simple and not nearly enough. “She knew, and she knew that I would go after her. She played me the whole time. She played me, but I wouldn’t play back, and so she punished me. She had her killed to punish me. Because what’s one more dead Terran? What’s one more slaughtered slave to the great Intendant? She didn’t even think of her as a person at all. Just another tool to make a point. Just one more blade to cut me with.”

Kira shook her head, understanding but frustrated. “She did that,” she said again. “She did it all, not you. You can’t blame yourself for not playing her games. It would’ve been worse if you had.”

“You don’t know that,” Dax said miserably. “I was there, and I don’t know it, so how the hell would you?”

“Because I know her, and I know you.” It wasn’t the first time she’d said that, but it burned a little deeper under Dax’s skin this time as Kira punctuated them with her fingertips, a scorching path trailing up her bare arms, over bruises and raised welts. “If she punished you, she did it because you wouldn’t let yourself turn into her. That’s a good thing, Jadzia, and the blood is on her hands, not yours.”

Dimly, Dax remembered Garak’s words, the spite and the disgust as he’d talked her through what he’d done, what had happened. _“At least this way, I’m the one with blood on my hands,”_ he’d said. _“There’s enough on them already.”_ She hadn’t bought that argument then, and she didn’t buy it now either. It made her see red for a moment, rage rushing to the surface, and she dug her nails into the slashes on her palms to keep from lashing out again.

“The blood’s on my hands,” she said. “Not hers, and not his. Mine. If it wasn’t for me, it wouldn’t have happened. She wouldn’t have even known her name.”

Kira sighed. Dax watched her jaw working as she ground her teeth, frustration and impatience fighting for control over that ruthless sympathy that still refused to die. Dax wanted to take her by the shoulders this time, to shake her just as Kira had shaken her, to tell her to listen to that frustration, to heed the impatience, to ignore the unwanted sympathy, to do it all for both their sakes. She didn’t want Kira’s affection, and she didn’t want to see the passion in her eyes give way to more wasted tears. She wanted anger and hate. She wanted judgement and execution. She wanted something she could relate to, something that could make her suffer. But still Kira clung to her sympathy, her compassion, to that Prophets-damned faith.

“Dax,” she said at last, voice heavy with bone-deep weariness.

“Don’t.” Dax raised a hand to silence her, hating the way it wouldn’t stop shaking. “Don’t try and make this okay. Don’t try to turn it into something that wasn’t my fault. Don’t take it away from me.” She needed the guilt, needed the blame, needed to feel responsible. She needed it, and she needed Kira to see it. “And don’t you dare forgive me.”

“Why not?” Kira demanded, watching as her fingertips trembled. “Someone needs to.”

“Not you.” Though she meant it as a command, it came out like a plea. “Not you, Nerys. If someone has to, let it be Bareil. Isn’t that what vedeks do?” Kira sighed, but didn’t argue. “He doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand. So let him forgive me. Let him talk about the Prophets and spiritual healing and all the rest of it, because he doesn’t really know what it’s like. Let him do it. Let him forgive me if I have to be forgiven by someone. But not you. Please, Nerys. Not you.”

But Kira was relentless, and she would no more allow Dax to deflect this than Dax would have allowed her to do the same if their positions had been reversed. “Bareil is a great vedek,” she said, “and a good man. But he doesn’t understand. He’s a religious leader, not a fighter. He doesn’t know what it’s like to carry such terrible things on his conscience. He never had to get his hands dirty like we did, and he never had to live with the consequences. He can empathise, but he won’t ever understand what it’s like. Not like—”

“Not like you.” Dax reeled to her feet, swaying unsteadily. She paced the room for a few rounds, back and forth and back and forth, then crossed to the window. “You understand, don’t you?” she murmured, gazing out at the darkening sky. “You understand what it’s like. You understand everything.”

“Do you really need to ask?” Kira snapped, genuinely offended. “You already know that I do. You know what the occupation was like for those of us who fought. You know what we did. I’ve told you a thousand times. Why are you asking me that?”

Dax didn’t answer. For a long time, she just stood there and watched the sky, tracing the patterns of the gathering clouds with her fingertips pressed against the glass, and committing them to memory. The clouds were dark, touched by the falling evening and heavy with rain, but they were still so much brighter than the thoughts in her head. She wanted to lose herself in them, to fill her head with clouds and skies and rain, to fill herself with all those things that didn’t matter until there wasn’t any room left for anything else, until Keiko and the Intendant and Jadzia and all the rest of it had no choice but to leave, until they all evaporated to make way for the coming storm.

“It’s going to rain,” she said aloud, and sighed heavily.

Kira sighed too, but for a very different reason; Dax didn’t need to turn around and look at her to know that she was aggravated by the change of subject. “Jadzia.”

“I’m sorry,” Dax murmured, keeping her eyes locked on the dusky horizon. “You and Bareil were meant to be watching the sun go down, weren’t you?” She leaned in until her forehead touched the glass. “I’m sorry if I made you miss it.”

“Forget the sun,” Kira said sharply. “Forget the rain. Dax…”

“Nerys.” Dax closed her eyes against the name; it hurt a little less now, but it still tasted like blood. “Kira. You should go. Be with Bareil.”

“Bareil can wait.”

She could hear the frustration rising in Kira’s voice again, inching its way back towards actual anger, and Dax felt her pulse quicken with anticipation. She wanted that. She wanted the anger, the aggression, even another fight if it came down to that. If Kira was going to drag this conversation out of her anyway, let her do it with a clenched jaw and balled fists; anything was better than that cloying sympathy, the claim to understand. Dax couldn’t talk like that, couldn’t bear it. It was too much. Nerys was too much, and she couldn’t bear her.

“It’s probably for the best that you didn’t go,” she mused, stubbornly clinging to the weather and the world outside. Her eyes were still closed, but she could see the wan and fading sunlight burned against the backs of her eyelids, warm and peaceful. _Bajor,_ she thought, and sighed again. “You wouldn’t want to get caught out in the rain.”

That did it. Dax felt the tension go suddenly whip-tight in the room, exploding a moment later in a vicious Bajoran curse. Kira lurched to her feet, crossing the space between them in a single long stride. “Dammit, Dax!” she shouted, blind with anger as she took her by the shoulders and hauled her away from the window by brute force.

Dax smiled. She didn’t resist as Kira dragged her across the room and shoved her down onto the bed, standing over her with a scowl on her face, tall and menacing; Dax supposed she’d only sat her down at all because it was the only chance she had of being able to use her height to intimidate her. Still, she let Kira have her moment, sitting still and shrugging as she looked up at her. She didn’t speak, didn’t react, didn’t do anything, just sat there and waiting to see if Kira would snap and lose that famed Bajoran temper of hers. She could feel her seething, rising to the bait as Dax ignored her again and again, and let her smile widen just a little. It was so invigorating, so enticing, so wonderful.

She understood the Intendant’s eagerness to bring out the violent parts of her now. She understood, like a flash of passion, the thrill of being the recipient of someone else’s anger, the thrill of being hated and shouted at, even struck, and all the more so when it was justified. She wanted Kira to take a swing at her, to lash out in pure unadulterated fury, without prompting and without the shield of self-defence. She wanted her to get so angry, so frustrated, to hate her so much that she simply could not control the urge to strike, to punch and kick and scream, to bleed her dry and bruise her broken, to hurt her like she deserved to be hurt.

 _You see?_ She didn’t even know any more if the voice belonged to Joran or the Intendant. Maybe it was neither. Maybe, at last, it was just Jadzia. _It’s intoxicating, isn’t it?_

The thought sobered her, and the discomfort sundered the excitement as she sucked in her breath. After everything she’d done, after all the precarious lines she’d almost crossed and all the lines she actually had, after all the terrible things the Intendant had brought out in her, all the regret and shame and self-loathing that she felt, after all the self-flagellation she’d put herself through, all the ways she’d struggled to reconcile those feelings inside of her… even after she’d come so far, it was still so easy to fall into the same trap all over again, still so easy to forget that violence wasn’t something to be sought out. Even now, gazing up at her beautiful faithful Nerys, it was still so easy to forget that she was a good person.

But then, she wasn’t a good person any more, was she? A woman had died because of her, and others had been hurt. Good people did not do that sort of thing. They didn’t let innocents die, they didn’t sell out their allies, they didn’t walk away and leave frightened and wretched creatures all alone. Good people did good things, and it had been so long since Dax had done anything like that.

Maybe Kira sensed the turmoil in her, the thrill doused by disgust, the hateful memories overshadowing the corner of herself that still took pleasure from it. She must have seen something, some kind of warning in her, because all of sudden, the frustration and the aggression were gone, vanished like a vapour trail. The violence Dax had wanted so badly was gone too, dissolved before she had a chance to draw strength from it, and in its place was the old familiar empathy, all that understanding she did not want.

“Jadzia.”

The name was soft again, tender and sickeningly sweet, and Dax hated it. She hated the sympathy, hated the understanding, and she hated herself for hating it. She hated how easily she had fallen into the thrall of brutality, how readily she’d let herself be seduced by the blaze of violence burning behind beautiful Bajoran eyes. She hated them both, the savagery that she ached for and the sympathy that she ached from. Why wasn’t there something in between? Why wasn’t there a place where she could hide from Kira’s forgiveness without having to burn everything down in a firestorm of hate and rage and pain? Why did it have to be one or the other, too sweet or too bitter, too gentle or too rough? Why couldn’t it just be simple? Why couldn’t she just be—

“Jadzia.”

She bit down on her lip. “I don’t know how not to be angry,” she confessed in a broken whisper. “I can’t remember how to feel anything else.”

Kira’s hand was back at her face, pushing her hair back, loose and tangled, and Dax realised with a jolt just how long it had been since she’d last put on her uniform, the grounding attire of a Starfleet officer. Maybe it would help to do that, she thought hazily. Maybe it would help her to remember who she was, what she was, the life she’d carved out for herself, if she put those clothes on dressed like the woman she had become. Maybe it would help to remove herself completely from that place, that universe and the people who lived in it, from Joran and his loose-cannon ideal of freedom, from Jadzia and her ill-fitting borrowed clothes, from the Intendant and her tangled sheets, from everything she’d been. Maybe it would help to take a step backwards, to let something else shape her, something from this side, this universe, this place that was home.

“Jadzia,” Kira said again. Somewhere along the line, Dax realised that she’d given up on telling her to stop saying that name; not hearing it spoken wouldn’t stop her from knowing it, she supposed, and it wouldn’t stop her from hurting when she did. She braced against the familiar sting, and the look on Kira’s face as she pressed on. “When are you going to stop talking to yourself and listen to me?”

“I don’t want to listen to you,” Dax huffed.

“I’m sure you don’t,” Kira countered softly.

“Nerys.” That name hurt too, but she didn’t have the energy to keep it off her tongue. “I know you understand what you think I’ve been through. I know you understand killing and trauma and pain. I know you think you know everything that happened and how I feel and what it made me. I know all that. I’ve heard it all before. But it’s not helping me. It doesn’t help when you say you understand the Intendant, or you understand that universe, or you understand—”

“— _anger_.” There it was again, vivid and powerful in the tremor underlying Kira’s voice, the same emotion that trickled through her veins. “I understand anger, Dax.”

That was true as well, but it didn’t help any more than the rest. “Your anger is nothing like mine,” Dax told her. “The Cardassians did unspeakable things to your people, and you had good reasons for hating them. All the Bajorans did.” She tried to pull away, but Kira leaned forward as she leaned back, and she couldn’t free herself from the fire in her eyes. “I have plenty of reasons to hate the Intendant, too, but she’s not the only one I hate. She’s not the only reason I’m angry. I don’t just hate the people who deserve it, and I’m not just angry at the people who gave me a reason. There’s no sense to what I’m feeling. There’s no sense to the way I’m angry, no sense to the things I hate. I hate the Intendant, and I hate Jadzia. I hate you, and I hate Bareil, and I hate myself. I hate everyone, Nerys. I hate everyone and I hate everything, and it doesn’t matter whether they deserve it or not.”

Kira laughed at that, calloused and scarred. “And how do you think I felt when I came to Deep Space Nine?” she countered. “We’d finally chased off the Cardassians, and you and your damned Federation didn’t waste five minutes before moving in to take their place. You think we wanted you camped out on our doorstep?”

Dax opened her mouth to offer the trademark Starfleet response, but Kira waved the excuse aside.

“Don’t waste your breath,” she said. “I know why you were there. I even knew it back then. But it didn’t stop me from getting angry. It didn’t stop me from hating you. Who the hell were you to storm into our home when we’d just got it back? Who the hell was Commander Sisko to pretend he was on our side when he didn’t know the first thing about our people or what they’d been through? Who the hell was that idiot Doctor Bashir to tell me that my home was some ‘wild frontier’ for him to play doctor in? And who… who the hell was that stuck-up little Trill to tell me how ‘ecologically fascinating’ the Bajoran system was?”

Dax managed a weak little smile at that, chuckling with seven lifetimes’ worth of self-deprecation. “I was a little stuck-up, wasn’t I?”

“Was?” Kira huffed, shooting a primal grin right back at her.

“All right, all right…” Dax grumbled. “I guess I’m still a little stuck-up.” Kira quirked a brow in wordless derision. “Fine. A _lot_ stuck-up.” She rolled her eyes, comforted to remember that place, a Deep Space Nine that wasn’t Terok Nor any more, a Major Kira who was angry about nothing, and a Lieutenant Dax who just wanted to help. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Kira deadpanned, then sobered. “My point is, I hated you. All of you.” She sighed. “I’d lived for so long with nothing else, just anger and hate. So many terrible feelings for so many terrible years. Anger was the only thing I knew, and even after it was all over, it was still the only thing I knew. Even when there was no more reason to feel that way, I couldn’t remember how to feel anything else. I didn’t know what to think, or how to behave. I didn’t know how to do anything at all. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have someone to hate, and I didn’t know what that meant. For a very, very long time, I didn’t know how not to be angry. I didn’t even know if it was possible.”

In spite of herself, Dax was drawn in, swallowed whole by words and sentiments that felt so familiar. “How did you learn?” she asked.

Kira smiled again, soft and sweet, and for the first time Dax found that she didn’t mind the tenderness at all. “You taught me.”

Dax laughed, an explosive burst of absurdity that was quickly aborted as she realised that Kira was serious. “You’ve got to be joking,” she said.

“Of course not.” The smile fell from Kira’s face, and she frowned, eyes narrowing until they were almost closed. “You really don’t remember?”

“Remember what?” Dax blurted out, but even as she asked, she did.

Newly joined Jadzia Dax, full to the point of discomfort with experiences both new and old, with thoughts and ideas and feelings, seven lifetimes’ worth of memories crammed inside one over-tired brain. Still green and fresh from her time in the initiate program, still young and dizzy and more than a little confused, she’d been well and truly overwhelmed. She’d drowned in the oily ocean of Curzon’s roguishness, floundered for purchase on Lela’s quiet authority, lost herself in the quite focus that Tobin felt when he was elbows-deep in an engine and the youthful glee that lit up Torias every time he powered up the thrusters of a new shuttle.

She’d clung to the calming influences, at least as much of them as she could reach through all that. Audrid and Lela were the best at that, sober and serious, held together by age and wisdom, and she drank deep of their quiet authority. She’d clung to Curzon, too, at least to the parts of him that cherished his dear old friend Benjamin Sisko. She latched onto the little things that would keep her afloat, the lightness that would buoy her up while she drifted and tried to spot a port in the storm, held fast to the things that would keep her steady and grounded, that would keep her sane through everything else. Her own aura of serenity through that first year had been much more a product of necessity than any real inner calm. Inside herself, she’d been utterly helpless.

Kira couldn’t possibly have known that about her, though. She had met Jadzia the intelligent young scientist and Dax the centuries-old symbiont. She’d met the stuck-up little Trill who thrived on exploration and discovery, the wild-eyed exuberance of youth alive once more in the symbiont through its new host. Kira had met Audrid’s serenity and Lela’s wisdom, and she’d caught glimpses of the others through that finely-crafted lens. Tobin’s vast knowledge, Torias’s enthusiasm, Emony’s ambition, Curzon’s honour, all carefully filtered through shy and studious young Jadzia.

It was a very long time before Kira had actually met Dax in her own right, because it had been entirely too easy to for her lean on those former hosts. They were so much older than she was, after all. Wasn’t that why so many Trills applied for joining? Wasn’t that why the symbiont was still settling inside of her? So that it could help her find her place in the world? So that it could bring out those things in her that she could never have brought out in herself alone? Wasn’t that why she was joined in the first place? Of course she would lean on them like she had. Wouldn’t anyone?

“Dax.”

She shook her head, willing herself to look back to Kira, feeling a mnemonic headache pulsing behind her eyes, the revenant throb of holding so many new personalities together. “You know that wasn’t really me, right? The real me, I mean.”

“Of course it was,” Kira countered, and chuckled as Dax crossed her arms, self-protective and sullen. “Come on, Dax. You must’ve told me a thousand times how hard it was to keep your balance after you were first joined. And you must’ve told me a thousand more that it didn’t really matter in the end. They’re all part of you, and what does it matter which one of them I was talking to when I took comfort on a given day in a given moment? If I found something I could relate to in Lela or Torias or whichever one you were channelling that day, it was still you.”

She thumbed Dax’s cheek, brushing away nonexistent tears, and Dax felt a whimper bubble in her chest. “I wish it was that simple,” she murmured.

“Joran’s not the only one inside you, you know,” Kira reminded her quietly. “You’ve got those other six to help. Well, if you’d stop being so damned stubborn for once, and start listening to them.”

“They wouldn’t have done what I did,” Dax argued. “They wouldn’t have let themselves be baited. They wouldn’t have let their guard down. They wouldn’t have let themselves be blinded by their feelings for—” She cut herself off before she could voice the thing they both already knew, emotion thick in her throat as she swallowed it down. “They wouldn’t have done any of the stupid things I did.”

“You give them too much credit,” Kira said, gentle but not without impact. “None of them were perfect. You should know that better than anyone.” She mustered a smile, but it was nothing like the easy one that had come earlier. “From what you and Sisko keep saying, it sounds like even your precious Curzon was a drunk and a womaniser. He’s not infallible just because he got to the worm before you did. None of them are. I’ll bet they all made mistakes in their lifetimes.” Her expression was cool, intense but very gentle; she reminded Dax a little of Lela when she tried to make a point. “You just don’t want to remember them. It’s easier for you to keep them way up high, out of reach on some great gilded pedestal. It’s easier for you to think they were such perfect hosts, that you’re the only one who ever screwed anything up for your symbiont. You don’t want to accept that maybe they did some damage of their own.”

Dax sighed, but she didn’t argue. How could she, really?

“Look,” Kira went on. “I know it’s not my place to come down too hard on your past lives or whatever they are. To be perfectly honest, I don’t even really know how the whole thing works. But I do know you. Okay? I know the Starfleet science officer who came to Deep Space Nine. I know the young woman she looked like and the old man she sounded like. And I know how patient she was with me.”

Dax looked down. Her eyelashes felt wet and heavy. “Nerys…”

Kira ignored her. “I know how patient you were when I was angry all the time. I know how acceptant you were when I told you again and again to leave me alone, when the only thing I wanted was for that stuck-up little Trill to take her stuck-up little Starfleet friends and get the hell away from my home. And that’s not all I know.” She smiled again, brighter, but Dax didn’t have the strength to return it. “I also know the arrogant and headstrong young woman who had to be coerced into going on a pilgrimage with a friend because she thought she could handle everything just fine all on her own. I know the stupid and stubborn bleeding heart who refused to let another soul suffer alone, even when she knew it was dangerous to try and help.”

“You know a lot of stupid things,” Dax said wryly, and Kira swatted her arm.

“Will you shut up and listen? My point is, I know you. And you can call yourself whatever name you want, but it won’t change the truth. You don’t like ‘Jadzia’? Fine. So call yourself ‘Dax’. Hell, you can go ahead and call yourself Curzon, for all I care. But don’t fool yourself into believing it’ll change anything. Curzon, Jadzia… they’re just _names_ , Dax. And they’re not going to change who you are.”

“I wish they would,” Dax whispered. “I really, really do.”

“Well, I don’t,” Kira said. “I like you as you are. Curzon, Torias, all of them. Because they’re all you. Not this one or that one. All of them. You. You are Jadzia Dax, and that means something. Hell, it means everything.” She shook her head, as though she couldn’t believe that Dax needed her to explain this to her. “Do you think Curzon would work four straight shifts to help Chief O’Brien get those damn ODN relays back online? Do you think Emony would treat that idiot Bashir with even the tiniest shred of politeness after he refused to accept ‘no’ as a credible answer for the fiftieth time in a row? Do you think Torias would come straight off a twelve-hour shift and then spend half the night helping Keiko set up that damn school of hers?”

The name struck like shattering glass. “ _Keiko_.”

Seeming to sense her point slipping away with one badly-chosen example, Kira snarled a curse. “Dammit. I’m sorry, Dax. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” She swore again.

Dax tried to shrug it off, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything at all. She felt like Kira had reached into her chest and pulled her heart out. _A fitting end to me,_ she mused with some irony, thinking back to all of those terrible dreams, Kira’s heart in her mouth, the taste of a fresh kill, again and again and again. Was this how the phantasmal dream Kira had felt? Did she choke and gag, fighting for breath that would not come, unable to even cry out as she died? Was this the fate Dax had forced on her? And did it matter, if it was all just a dream?

“Dax.” Kira sounded urgent now, and her fingers were like fire-forged steel digging into her arms. “Dax. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Dax said, feeling light-headed. “You’re not the one who killed her. You’re not the reason she’s dead. Why are you sorry? What do you have to be sorry for?”

Kira looked deep into her eyes, searching for something she could connect to, some sign of life. “Dax…”

“I’m serious,” Dax mumbled. “Why are you sorry? Hell, why are you even talking to me?” She laughed, on the brink of mania, then instantly found herself fighting tears. Laughter and tears; they were always so close, weren’t they? “Why are you here? Why do you care? Why… why won’t you hate me?”

Kira pulled her in close, wrapping her up in an embrace that felt so much more like a cage. “Because I know you,” she said softly. “And because I understand.”

A violent sob caught in Dax’s throat, wrenching its way out of her before she had a chance to try and hold it down. “Don’t,” she pleaded weakly. “Don’t know me. Don’t understand me. Don’t forgive me. Please, please, please… if you care at all, Nerys, please don’t forgive me. Just…” She choked on another sob, then another, endless and brutal, until she stopped resisting and let them come. “Just hate me. Please. Please, just hate me.”

“I can’t.” A kiss, pressed like a promise to her forehead; it chased away the last of the sobs, and Dax didn’t know whether to be grateful or resentful. “You know I can’t.”

“Please.” She tried to struggle, to pull away from Kira and her terrible understanding, but she still couldn’t breathe and she still couldn’t move. She could only beg, and she did. “Please, Kira. Please. Hate me. Hit me. Hurt me. _Hate me._ Please…”

“No.”

Another kiss, and then another, more and more until there was nothing left of the tears at all, not even their tracks. Kira’s lips were warm and impossibly soft, just like she was; they suffocated and strangled as they traced a delicate path down from Dax’s brow, over her temple, across her cheek and her jaw, marking and protecting every inch of skin they could reach, calming and balming and making her forget, making her new, making her into something that had no name.

When she reached the corner of Dax’s mouth, she hesitated. It was only a moment, but to Dax it felt like another wasted lifetime, breath hot against her parted lips, and she gulped at the emotion-charged air to keep from surging forwards and swallowing her down. That moment was everything she didn’t want, tenderness and compassion smoothing over the worst of her, sanding down the jagged edges of fury and fervour, of pain and guilt and hate and hurt. It cut through it all, reminding her of all the things Joran had taken from her, all the things the Intendant had made her deny, all the things that the other Jadzia resented so much in herself, all the things that came with being joined, that came with being _Dax_.

“Please,” she whispered again, a final plea before Kira closed the space between them and silenced her for good.

“No.”

Kira breathed the word into her, skin to skin and mouth to mouth, one word again and again and again until it was the only thing Dax knew, until even the anger burned away, until the fear and the shame and the guilt all vanished. All those things that she had clung to for so long, all the horrible and painful things that she’d wrapped around herself, a noose around her neck and a vice around her heart, all of them gone, whispered away, dispersed like stardust until there was nothing left of any of them, until there was nothing left of her either, nothing left but the memory of a symbiont named Dax and the press of warm Bajoran lips against her own.

 _No_ , over and over, and Dax wanted to turn away, to deny Kira’s denial, to beg her to take it back, to do anything it took to make Kira hate her. She wanted to tear the forgiveness out of her like Joran had torn the soul out of Jadzia, like she’d torn the Intendant’s sheets; she wanted to turn even her beautiful Nerys into something dark and twisted, something she could understand, even to make her like the Intendant if that was what it took to undo this. She wanted to do anything, anything at all, if only it would fill her with hate, if only it would stop her from knowing and understanding, anything to turn those kisses hard, anything to turn the tingling echoes of contact on her cheek to bruises and brutality, anything to crush the taste of moba fruit into blood and pain and torn-out hearts, anything to sever this moment, this beautiful wonderful terrible moment, this moment she was so afraid of. Anything, anything but this. Anything but—

“Jadzia.”

“ _No_.” And this time it was Dax saying that word, breathing it out in desperate panting gasps as Kira caught it and turned it back, a promise scored against the edge of her tongue. “No.”

“Yes.” Her eyes were open, her mouth and her heart, and Dax wanted to close it all, to end it all, to destroy it all, but she couldn’t move and she couldn’t breathe.

“No.”

Dax sobbed against her, whimpering and shuddering, spilling out her grief and her pain into the back of Kira’s mouth, pouring herself into this woman, this beautiful Bajoran, this terrible tyrant, this fire-forged soul who was so many people. She lost herself in her, lost all the things that had defined her; she let herself forget, let herself remember, let herself exist. She let herself be wordless and soundless, warm lips and breathless whimpers, nonsense sounds and gasping moans, _Nerys_ and _Jadzia_ , and _why don’t you hate me why don’t you hate me why don’t you…_

…but she didn’t. Still, even now, she didn’t hate her. Still, even now, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Still, even now, she held her and kissed her and had faith in her. Still… even now… still…

“…I forgive you.”


	36. Chapter 36

“No.”

Reflex sharpened Dax’s teeth, and she tried to bite down, to rip the forgiveness out of Kira, to make her take it back. Her teeth snapped, sharp and deadly, seeking lips or tongue or yielding flesh, anything to tear at, but of course Kira was too quick. She was too quick and too fierce and too damn understanding, and she would not allow Dax to destroy either one of them.

She pulled back a little, just far enough that her mouth was out of reach, and just long enough for Dax to catch her breath and scrabble for her sanity. Dax let out a frustrated growl, the sound just as reflexive as the snap of her teeth, and whined when Kira leaned in, redoubling her kisses and her kindness until Dax felt her body start to submit.

In truth, she wasn’t even sure if she was really angry at all, but the urge to attack, to draw blood, to drive the softness out of Kira even if she couldn’t drive out her understanding, was overwhelming beyond her ability to fight it. She tried again, twisting and wriggling in Kira’s arms, but this time it was her own hateful body that betrayed her, pressing itself into lean limbs and slender muscles, relaxing even as she tried to fight.

“Dax…”

The sympathy in her voice was unbearable, and the lightness of her fingertips as they trailed in soothing circles over the back of her neck was as maddening as an out-of-reach itch. Dax moaned into her mouth, drowned out the sound of her name, of the symbiont’s name, of whoever went by that name now. She tried to arch, too, to writhe against the sinew of Kira’s body, to demand more pressure or at least a bite of pain, the scratch of her nails or the sting of her teeth, anything that would stain the sweetness with something bitter, anything that would turn the softness to something rough.

 _Violence,_ she thought, and longed for it.

But still, Kira wouldn’t allow it. Still, she resisted, giving only as much as she wanted to, and nowhere near as much as Dax wanted. She was ruthless in her refusal to fight back, cruel in her unwillingness to cut. Dax wanted nothing more than to hurt, but Kira would sooner make her ache.

“Listen to me.” She ghosted the words across Dax’s lips, just the faintest touch lingering in the strain-filled space between their breaths, then leaned back just far enough for Dax to forgot what she was trying to do, what she wanted, what she needed, just enough to make her forget everything. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Dax struggled again, as much against the intimacy of the moment as the words themselves. The contact was excruciating and the kisses burned hotter than plasma, the terrible and wonderful knowledge that this was Kira, her Kira, her _Nerys_. She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear the truth; Nerys was so much worse than the Intendant, so much worse than that terrible tyrant. At least the Intendant knew that Dax was twisted; at least she knew that she was capable of terrible things. At least she knew what she was.

She tried to lash out against that, against the thought and the truth, how wonderful and how terrible it was, how wrong that she missed the Intendant and how right that Nerys was nothing like her. She tried to lash out against everything, but Kira’s hands were faster than her flailing arms, locking tight around her wrists and pinning them to her sides.

“Stop it,” Dax hissed, guttural and urgent. “Stop saying that. Stop taking the blame away from me. Stop pretending you understand.”

“I do understand,” Kira pressed, voice sharper now. “I know you don’t want to accept it, Dax, but you’re not the only one who ever had to live with the consequences of their mistakes. You’re not the only one who ever had to worry about the state of their soul after they did something unforgivable.” She sighed, and her fingers flexed around Dax’s wrists, loosening a bit but still not setting her free. “You’re one of the lucky ones. You get to walk away knowing you didn’t do the deed yourself.”

That was the last thing Dax wanted to hear. She struggled more violently, but Kira held her fast. “Stop it!”

“Not until you hear me,” Kira said. “Not until you understand too.”

Dax shook her head, furious, and Kira released her hands to cup her face. Though Dax knew that she must have more than enough strength to subdue her by force if she needed to, she kept her touches light and fleeting, barely existent at all, and as desperately as she wanted to tear that tenderness apart, Dax found that she couldn’t. Pitiful as it was, light and fleeting and so much weakness, somehow, miraculously it was enough to temper her, enough to cool her. Kira knew that. Kira knew everything. Worse, Kira knew her.

Dax wanted to scream. She wanted the same violence she’d always wanted, but it was more than she could do to resist those tender touches, that impossible lightness, the compassion from someone who had always been so hardened. It felt so strange, so backwards, that Kira was the one to be so gentle, that Dax was the one who couldn’t stop struggling, that she was the one itching and twitching and aching for violence and blood, for a firestorm of rage and pain, for something brutal enough to make sense, while Kira just smiled softly and held her face and understood.

Against her will, she remembered those first few weeks on Deep Space Nine.

Back then, Kira was the one who wanted the violence. Kira was the wild one, the furious one. She was a live-wire of leftover aggression, part of her still back on Bajor at the height of the occupation, and she would tear a Starfleet officer apart as soon as look at them. She was unrelentingly angry all the time, and she took every opportunity she could to vent her frustrations on anyone who would stand still long enough. She was just like Dax was now, and against her will she remembered it all.

She remembered coming on duty one morning, fresh-faced and cheerful, blithely chirping _“good morning, Major”_ over her shoulder as she crossed to her station, only to find herself in the infirmary five minutes later, being treated for a black eye after catching the edge of a PADD hurled in a fit of early-morning rage.

Benjamin had talked very sternly to Kira about that. _“I don’t know how they do it on Bajor,”_ he’d thundered, loud enough for all of Ops to hear, _“but on my station we don’t throw equipment at people just for smiling too much!”_ He had been furious, of course, both on Dax’s behalf at his own inability to keep his loose-cannon first officer under control. Dax had understood his outrage, even shared it in the moment or two before Julian had taken the sting out, but being older and wiser, she’d known that all that yelling and blustering would not make the least bit of difference to someone like Kira.

Kira didn’t need discipline or reprimand, and she certainly didn’t need another unwanted authority figure shouting commands at her. She needed compassion. She needed someone who understood. She needed someone to forgive her.

Dax had taken her to Quark’s that evening, after they’d both finished their shifts. She bought her dinner, and the best bottle of springwine the Ferengi had in stock, and hadn’t said a word as Kira had glared at her over the table. For a long time, that was all she did, sat there and watched, patient and quiet. Neither of them touched their food and neither so much as glanced at the wine, at least not at first. Kira’s eyes were narrow, danger and accusation aglow in them, and Dax had sat there in respectful silence as she’d ranted and raved, telling her again and again that she didn’t want her pity or her sympathy or her understanding. She didn’t need forgiveness from some smart-mouthed Federation know-it-all, she insisted, almost knocking over her wine glass with the ferocity of her gesturing, and she didn’t want it either. For all she cared, Dax could take her little peace offering and flush it out the nearest airlock.

For her part, Dax had just smiled and let her rant, listening with attentive respect to every word. She waited until Kira had got it all out of her system, until she was too hoarse to shout any more, until there wasn’t anything left for her to shout about anyway, until her anger exhausted itself and burned out, leaving behind nothing but a tired and miserable young Bajoran who had been through hell and still hadn’t quite accepted that it might be over now. She waited with all the patience and empathy of seven lifetimes, and when Kira finally slumped back in her seat, worn out and melancholy, she had poured a generous glass of springwine and softly slid it across the table.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” she’d said, still smiling, “would you care for a drink?”

Kira had glared at her all over again for that, and Dax watched the aggression flare up in her once more, a second wind of fury that gave her more courage than all the springwine on Bajor. “Why do you have to be so damn forgiving?” she demanded furiously.

Dax just shrugged and let her smile soften. “Because I understand.”

It had been a very different kind of understanding, of course, but that didn’t make it any less true. Of course she couldn’t claim to understand what Kira must have gone through on Bajor, what the occupation must have been like for the countless Bajorans who suffered under it. Seven lifetimes’ worth of wisdom and experience only went so far when each of those lives were the best and the brightest. Dax the symbiont had lived a very privileged existence, and a very sheltered one; Jadzia the host knew that, and she was well aware of its limitations. Kira’s existence wasn’t nearly so easy, and it certainly wasn’t comfortable; her people had been stripped of everything they were, crushed to dust beneath steel-toed Cardassian boots, and Dax knew without Kira having to tell her that she couldn’t possibly know what that was like. Another seven lifetimes, even another seven hundred wouldn’t be enough to know that. 

But still, in her own quiet way, she understood. Understanding came from more than simply experiencing, and Dax had learned that again and again. She may not have lived through the kind of oppression and trauma that the Cardassians had inflicted on the Bajorans, but she had seen its like more times than she could count. Over the span of three centuries, she had seen countless worlds and countless species, and being safely locked away in her bubble of privilege wasn’t enough to bind her eyes or blind her to the sight of it. She had _seen_. She may not have endured the lashes herself, and she was grateful for that, but still she had seen them. Again and again, she had seen. Over and over, across time and space, through civilisation and the lack of it… over and over, again and again, she had seen.

It wasn’t enough; she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that it was. But it was something. None of Dax’s hosts knew what trauma felt like, but they had all seen it. In one form or another, they all knew what it looked like. Dax had seen, and sitting at a cramped table in an overcrowded bar, smiling softly at a woman she barely knew over an untouched glass of Bajoran wine, she saw it all over again.

But Kira didn’t see. She didn’t see anything at all. Kira didn’t recognise the warning signs, because she was too close to them; she was inside the klaxon, and it had deafened her to its blaring. How could she hear it? How could she see? She only knew, and all she knew was that she felt angry, that she hated the Federation, hated Starfleet, hated the know-it-all Trill who sat opposite her and pretended to understand. Those were simple things, straightforward things, things that made sense. She clung to them like Dax clung to Curzon and the others, wrapping the knowledge of experience around herself until it covered her completely, until she couldn’t see anything, least of all the mark of trauma inside herself.

Kira wanted to lash out, Dax knew, to throw the springwine in her face and storm out of that bar before Dax could see the way her hands were trembling, before Dax could see how hard it was for her to stay angry in a place like this, before Dax could see any of the things that she was trying so desperately not to admit even to herself. She thought she could hide, but that was because she could not see.

Kira wasn’t angry. She was trembling and traumatised, and clinging to the one emotion that had always kept her safe. Dax didn’t know how that felt, and she didn’t pretend that she did. It wasn’t her place to tell Kira how to feel, how to pave over the cracks the Cardassians had left behind. It was not her place to know anything, but she saw those cracks through the lens of safety and distance, and though she would not tell Kira to pave them over, she would tell her that she recognised them.

“I understand,” she said again.

Kira looked at her steadily. She picked up the glass, neither of them acknowledging the shaking of her fingers, then drained its contents in a single swallow. “No,” she replied. “You don’t.”

Dax knew all too well how deeply Kira hated her in that moment. The soft-smiling pretender, the pampered and privileged Trill, the Starfleet know-it-all who claimed to understand things she couldn’t even begin to imagine. She hated her so much that even her anger didn’t know what to do with itself, so much that for a moment it eclipsed itself and left her confused. She hated her, completely. But still, for all that hate, she stayed at the table, and she drank that springwine, and she let Dax fill her up with her unwanted forgiveness and her hollow understanding, with empathy and sympathy, with tender touches and whispered words, with all those things she didn’t want. She stayed, and Dax stayed with her, for as long as she wanted, as often as she wanted, letting her be as angry as she wanted to be, letting her pour it all out until there was nothing left, until her hand stopped shaking when she drank her springwine, until she stopped saying _“no you don’t”_ , until at long last she started smiling back.

It was one of young Jadzia Dax’s proudest moments, the moment Kira let her guard down for the first time and let Dax see her smile. She tried to smile again at the memory, to let it warm her like the sweet-tasting wine, but right now it tasked as bitter and corrosive as acid.

She snapped back to the present with a jolt, to Bajor and Kira and tender kisses pressed to her open mouth, to a soft smile that wasn’t her own, and understanding that was meant to be received and not given.

This time, Dax realised, she was the one trembling. This time she was the one fighting and resisting, the one pouring out her anger, hurting and hating and refusing to let Kira understand. How could she ever have been the one with all that compassion, all that understanding? How could she ever have been the one who was so kind? She couldn’t even remember what kindness was.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kira said again.

“I hate you,” Dax choked, forcing the words out in the space between messy wet sobs and messy wet kisses. “I hate you for understanding. I hate you for forgiving me. I hate you… I hate you… I hate you for not hating me.”

“I know,” Kira said, and that just made it worse. Was there anything she didn’t know? Was there anything she didn’t understand? “I know you hate me. I hated you too.”

She stopped kissing her, pulling back just to pull her her into her arms instead. She held her there; nothing more, just held her and rocked her and murmured _“I know”_ in halting breaths against her ear, and Dax hated it. She hated the stillness, the quiet, the contact. She missed the wet heat of her mouth, gentle curves and light pressure. She was so tender, even in that, so much Nerys and so little Kira, unimaginably different to the Intendant’s power-hungry passion and scar-deep savagery.

When the Intendant kissed her, she left her mark; when she kissed her, she made it hurt. She made everything hurt, and that was exactly what Dax — no, Joran — had wanted. At that time, in those moments, she had loved it. She’d relished the sting, swallowed down the taste of blood and traced the bruises they left behind. She’d loved the unapologetic brutality, the relentless cruelty. She’d loved the violence of it.

She expected to miss it. When Kira leaned in, breathing her forgiveness into Dax’s mouth, kissing her with so much tenderness, she expected to miss the Intendant’s violence, her possession, the parts of her that struck deep and latched onto the like-minded Joran. She expected to miss the taste of blood, the bruises, all those things she’d tried so hard to resist at the time, all those things that had become so fundamentally a part of her since then. And a part of her still did. Even now, a part of her wanted to surge up and claim the Kira in her arms, to bite down until she couldn’t possibly stop her, to claim her like the Intendant would have done, like Joran wanted to do. But it was a smaller part than she’d expected, and ignoring it wasn’t nearly as difficult as she thought it would be.

In spite of herself, she found that she relished it. The softness, the sweetness, the barely-existent contact, feathered kisses and hitching breath. The Intendant’s mouth tasted of blood, of metal and heat, of danger, but Kira’s mouth tasted of Bajor. She tasted of fruit and strength, of all the faith she’d told Dax to have in herself, all the faith she gave away so easily. Without a doubt, this Kira was her Kira. Her Nerys. She tasted like home, the same home Dax still couldn’t understand, and the simplicity of it, the familiar echo fettered the need for violence, for the Intendant, for that dark and deadly universe. Dax still couldn’t remember what kindness was, but she knew that Kira’s kisses tasted like it.

Inexplicably, she wanted those kisses back. She wanted those tender tethers to the Dax she used to be, the Dax that harboured illicit feelings for her friend Kira, the Dax who only knew of one Nerys. That Dax was simple, straightforward; she didn’t buckle and break under the weight of her memories. She didn’t see the blood staining her hands every time she looked down at them, didn’t wish the self-inflicted rivers carved out by a blades that wasn’t hers. That Dax had never had any kind of blood on her hands, not her own and not anybody else’s. She missed that Dax, that simple innocent young Jadzia. And for the first time, she wanted her back.

She wanted Kira to kiss her again, to stop talking and just kiss her. She wanted to drown in the physicality of it, to lose herself in touches that didn’t come steeped in words, to let Kira breathe into her mouth until she could breathe on her own. She wanted Kira to take her, to make love to her. Not the kind of sex she’d known with the Intendant, the sordid and traumatic pleasures they’d taken together in that twisted Terok Nor. No, nothing like that. She wanted Kira to smooth over the marks that her other self had scored beneath Dax’s skin, to sand down the pain still turning her body black and blue. She wanted her to replace it all with something new, something that didn’t hurt, or at the very least something that hurt in the right way, the healing way, something that whispered with memories of what kindness was. She wanted Kira to take all of that kindness, unwanted and forgotten, and pour it all over her body, to fill her up with it, to paint it in beautiful Bajoran colours over every inch of her until she had no choice but to remember, until she had no choice but to feel it.

She wanted Nerys. She wanted her kisses, her touches, her mouth and her hands. She wanted her body, so like the Intendant’s but so different, lean and lithe and strong. She wanted Kira to force-feed her gentleness, to turn her into what she wanted just like the Intendant had tried to do, to shape her into the Dax she thought she knew. Words were hollow, empty, useless things. They were meaningless, and they were not good enough any more. She wanted Nerys to replace the Intendant in her memories, to suffocate her and subsume her; she wanted to call her name and know that it really was her, to know that she really was home and safe and free, that the woman holding her really was her Nerys, that nobody else was going to die. She wanted so much, so desperately.

But Kira wouldn’t give her any of it. She wouldn’t kiss her again, and she wouldn’t touch her. She wouldn’t force her to take her sympathy or drive her understanding into her. She wouldn’t do anything Dax wanted, wouldn’t play into what she imagined she needed, wouldn’t do anything that would remind either of them of the Intendant and what she stood for. Instead, she just held her, murmuring the same words over and over — _“I forgive you”_ and _“It wasn’t your fault”_ and _“I understand”_ — but they weren’t enough. They were just words, stupid and small, sentiment and solace lost to the urgency of Dax’s gasping breaths, and she couldn’t believe them. Words. What good were words?

“Nerys.” She twisted in her arms, struggling to reach out, aching to touch Kira if Kira wouldn’t touch her. “ _Nerys_ …”

But, of course, Kira wouldn’t let her do that either. She just held her, pulling her in closer and stilling her fumbling hands. “Dax,” she said, a warning that fell on deaf ears as Dax wriggled free and reached for her again. “Dax, no.”

“Why not?” The pitchy quality to her voice made it sound almost petulant, and though the part of her that was still rational knew that was exactly why Kira was right to stop her, still she persevered just the same. “You want me, just like she did. You said so yourself. You knew that she wanted me because…” Her voice cracked, catching painfully, and Kira’s features flickered with sorrow. “You knew that she wanted me because she was you. Because you…”

“Stop it.” It was more than just a warning this time, and it was about more than just Dax as well. Her eyes darkened, turning to obsidian, and Dax would have shuddered if she wasn’t so desperate. “I’m not like her. I’m not like her at all. Do you hear me?” Dax wasn’t entirely convinced that Kira was talking to her at all, but she nodded anyway. “I’m not like her. I don’t just take the things I want.”

Dax leaped on that, clinging to the unspoken confession like it was the only thing keeping her alive. “But I want you, too.” _Just like I wanted her,_ she thought, but didn’t say it. “Doesn’t that count for something? I want you too, Nerys. I want…”

“No.” Kira leaned back just a little, studying her face, lips thinned and tight at the corners. “You’re not in your right mind, Jadzia. You’ve just got back from a terrible place, and most of you is still over there. You’re still over there, just like…” She sighed, deep and tragic, and Dax could see how deeply this was affecting her. “Just like I was still living the occupation even after it was over.”

“It’s different,” Dax insisted. “It’s different. Nerys…”

“It’s not different,” Kira insisted, leaning further back. “You’re looking at me, but all you can see is her. You won’t hear what I’m saying at all.” She gestured at the space between their chests. “This isn’t about us at all, is it? Whether I want you or not, it doesn’t really matter because it’s not about that. It’s not about me wanting you, or you wanting me. It’s about the Intendant. It’s about what you did with her and what she did to…” She trailed off, apparently sensing that Dax wouldn’t let her say ‘you’, and quickly corrected herself. “…to Keiko. It’s about her, Jadzia. It’s not about me.”

“It’s always about you,” Dax argued, faltering. “Always, Nerys.”

And perhaps Kira actually let herself believe that for a second or two, because she didn’t resist as Dax pushed forwards to claim her lips again. She let herself melt into it, let Dax take what she needed, but only for a moment, a self-indulgent moment that was gone as quickly as it arrived. It was enough for Dax to get carried away, enough for her to lose herself, but it wasn’t enough for Kira to lose sight of what she felt, and when Dax tried to deepen it (the kiss, the moment, the contact, everything), hands groping with the creases and folds of her clothing, Kira pulled back again.

“No.”

Dax gripped the front of her tunic, thin fabric sliding like water between her fingers. “Please…” she begged, no longer caring how small she sounded. “Give me something I can use. I don’t want any more useless words. I don’t want to talk, and I don’t want to listen. I just want… I just want to feel. I want you to make me feel. I want… I want…”

“I know what you want,” Kira said, voice husky despite her best efforts to cool it. “Believe me, Jadzia, I know.”

“…you,” Dax insisted anyway, urgency overpowered by pain. “Just you. Just _us_. Just…”

“I said ‘no’.” Kira’s expression was hard, but it softened just a little at the anguish Dax didn’t even try to keep from her face. “Not now. Not while you’re like this. And not with Bareil in the next room.”

“Bareil.” Dax tried to laugh, but it came out as a whimpering hiccup. “Don’t you think he’d understand?”

“I know he’d understand,” she said, then sighed again. “If he thought it was the right thing, of course he’d understand. He’d even give it his blessing. But that doesn’t mean we should make him.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then set her jaw. “Besides, it’s not the right thing. You know that as well as I do. You don’t need this, Jadzia. You just think you do. What you need is to forgive yourself. What you need is understanding.”

It wasn’t good enough, and Dax pulled away from her, biting down on an incensed cry. She crawled up the bed towards the pillows, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, hugging herself hard. If Nerys wouldn’t give her what she wanted, she thought, then she would take her own comfort instead; what good was understanding from someone who wouldn’t drive it into her, and what good was forgiveness from someone who wouldn’t force it? 

Though she clearly wanted to follow her, to stay as close as Dax would allow, Kira had enough foresight to stay where she was. She didn’t say anything, but Dax was acutely aware of her eyes on her, bright and touched with water, and of the sorrow radiating from her as she watched.

 _I’m here,_ she seemed to be saying. _You can ignore me all you like, but you can’t make me disappear. I’m here, and I know you, and I forgive you._

“I don’t want your forgiveness,” Dax said, not wanting to give Kira an opening to say those awful words aloud. “And I don’t want your understanding, either.” She looked up, plaintive and hopeless, practically pleading. “I want your hands on me. I want you to…”

“I know what you want,” Kira said again. She sounded upset, frustrated all over again by Dax’s refusal to listen, by her stubbornness and her unwillingness to let herself be helped. “But it’s not what you need, and it’s not healthy. Jadzia, you’ve been through a—”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I’ve been through!” Dax shouted, rejected and wounded; she hugged her knees a little harder, rocking in place. “Don’t try and talk to me about all the things you think happened over there, all the things you think happened to me. They didn’t. Nothing happened to me, Nerys, so don’t try and turn this into something it’s not. Don’t try to make it sound like I was the one who suffered when Jadzia is broken and Keiko is dead!”

“Their pain doesn’t negate yours.” Suddenly Kira’s voice was impossibly quiet, as though Dax’s pain had cut into her as well, as though she was feeling it with her. Dax had shouted, almost screaming out her diatribe, but Kira’s response was barely above a whisper. “Nobody is trying to take away their hurt, Jadzia. But it doesn’t mean you’re not hurting too.”

“Yes it does,” Dax insisted, frenzied and irrational. “That’s exactly what it means. They’re the ones who hurt. They’re the ones who suffered. They’re the ones who lost their souls and their minds and their lives because of me. They’re the ones who suffered and hurt. Not me.”

She had never seen Kira’s eyes look so clear; tears shone in them, bright and filled with borrowed sunlight, but they didn’t fall. The whole time she’d been here, Kira had not allowed herself to cry, not while Dax was, and this moment was no exception. It made Dax wish she could get angry again, made her fingers clench and tighten over her knees. She wasn’t supposed to be the weak one. She was supposed to be the old one, the wise one, the learned and experienced symbiont and the intelligent young woman who housed it. She was supposed to be a Trill; she was supposed to be a _Dax_. How could Kira see through her so clearly? How could she cut through so effortlessly to the trembling little Jadzia underneath?

“You.” It was just one tiny word, but it carved a path through her as ruthless and violent as anything Dax had ever known. “Dammit, Dax, do you think I don’t know this too?”

Dax gripped her knees even more tightly. “Not me,” she said again. “Not me.”

Kira ignored her. “Don’t you think I said the same thing a thousand times during the occupation? Don’t you think I looked around at what was happening to my people and hated myself for feeling like I was the one in pain? People were dying all around me. My friends and family were dying. Innocent people were dying every day, and those that were unlucky enough to survive wished they hadn’t. All around me, every single day, people were killed, or abused, or worse.” She shook her head, still astonished that her planet and her people had made it through. “And there I was, alive, healthy, safe and surrounded by people who would protect me to their last breath. I had it good. I was lucky. My life was so much better than so many others. So who was I to imagine that what I felt was pain?”

“It was,” Dax heard herself say, the words coming automatically. She remembered this now, too, how often they’d talked about it, how hard it had been for Kira to accept the validity of her own experiences. “Just because it was less… that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t real, and it doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It was still suffering, Nerys. It was still—”

“—pain,” Kira finished, almost triumphant. “It was still pain. It was still trauma. You helped me to realise that, Dax. Again and again, you told me that it was all right for me to feel that way, that it was all right to feel like I had suffered too. Again and again and again, you told me that my pain was not less important just because it was less.”

Dax shook her head, trying so hard to keep these two things separate, to keep Kira’s issues at the forefront, to lock her own out of sight so that nobody would see how similar they were, so that Kira wouldn’t pick up on it and use it against her. They weren’t the same, she told herself over and over, just as repetitive and fervent as when she’d told Kira that her pain mattered. They weren’t the same, it was different, this wasn’t like that. She wasn’t oppressed, she wasn’t a victim, there was no occupation. There was no occupation, there was no occupation, there was no occupation…

“I killed people too,” Kira reminded her, cutting through the clamour of her denial. “People died because of me too. Evil people, yes, but innocents as well. Maybe even children. I don’t know. I’ll never know how much blood I have on my hands, or how much any of it was really worth. And I live with that every day of my life. I live with those deaths and that blood and that uncertainty every single day… but I live with them knowing _why_. I live with them knowing what was at stake. I live with them because I know that what I was fighting for was more important.” She closed her eyes, and for the first time she let her own tears fall, so much brighter and so much more honest than Dax’s. “I won’t ever forget. I don’t ever want to forget. But I did what I had to do, for my home and for my people. I did it for the right reasons. And maybe I’m deluding myself, but I like to think that something good came out of the blood I spilled, that maybe some part of the Bajor we have now is because of what I did.”

“That’s the difference,” Dax whispered, barely able to shape the words through the maelstrom of Kira’s. “Nothing good came out of what I did.”

“And maybe nothing good came out of mine,” Kira replied calmly. “Maybe I’m deluding myself, imagining that it did. But it doesn’t matter. I did what I did because I believed it was right. I did what I did because it was the only thing I could do. And may the Prophets forgive me, I would do it again.”

Dax thought about that. She remembered trying to say the same thing to Kira, out of sheer determination to make her see why she’d left. But the words hadn’t come; she hadn’t been able to twist them off her tongue, to make them real, to make the idea real. She still didn’t know if she would go back again, given the choice. It hurt just to think of that place, of all the pain she’d caused, all the havoc she’d wrought. It burned like a brand on her chest, scorching and searing its mark on her heart and leaving her soulless and screaming. If she had to do it again, would she? Could she? Knowing what she knew now, could she put herself through that hell again?

“Jadzia,” Kira said. “There’s no sure way to know that my deeds made a difference. But there’s also no sure way to know that yours didn’t. For all you know, the other Dax might have died without your help.”

“For all I know, she might still die,” Dax replied bitterly. “I didn’t exactly do much for her. All I did was tell her it was up to her. All I did was tell her there was nothing I could do.”

“I don’t believe that’s all you did,” Kira said, very quietly. Dax opened her mouth to counter that, to point out that she couldn’t possibly know, but Kira held up a hand to silence her before she began. “But even if it is, that’s not the point, is it? The point is, you did the best you could. You risked everything to cross over to that awful place and try to help her. You did everything you could to stop her from giving in to the same monster you’ve been fighting yourself, because you couldn’t bear to let her suffer alone. Who knows how many people she might have hurt or killed if that psychopath overpowered her? Who knows what she might have done if she hadn’t had you to hold her hand, even for just a few minutes? And who knows how many lives she might save now that you’ve saved hers?”

“I don’t know that I did save hers,” Dax pointed out again. “And even if I did, you give her too much credit.”

Kira quirked a brow, genuinely confused by the resentment in her voice. “What makes you say that?”

Dax snorted a wry chuckle. “She’s not the kind to go out and save lives. She’s arrogant and stubborn. She’s egotistical and self-serving. She puts her own desires before other people’s needs. She makes stupid decisions and stupid mistakes, and she… she’s not good for anything, Nerys. And she won’t ever be.” She thought of Jadzia again, of her exile, of her life with Benjamin, of everything she knew about her and everything she never would. “She’s just like me.”

Kira smiled, almost reverent. “If that’s true,” she said in a low whisper, “you’re the one not giving her enough credit.”

“Don’t,” Dax pleaded again. “Don’t say things like that. Don’t.”

“Then listen to me.” Kira was pleading too, but in a very different way, open and heartfelt and sincere, so desperate for Dax to believe what she was trying to tell her. “Listen to me when I say that it wasn’t your fault. Listen to me when I say that your pain has value. Listen to me, Dax. I understand all of this better than you ever will, so stop trying to drown yourself in your own guilt and just _listen to me_.”

Dax hugged her legs, pressing her forehead against her knees. She tried to breathe, slow and steady and even, like Lela used to do before an important council meeting or Emony did before a particularly gruelling competition. Curzon never had to breathe like that, she thought, and neither did Joran. In Curzon, it was a point of pride, the same stubbornness that eager young Jadzia had inherited so readily, but for Joran, it was simply unnecessary. Even when he was at his most unrepentant, his most savage or his most violent, even when he was angry enough to kill without thought, he was utterly calm, utterly at peace. The ticking hysteria that pressed down now on Dax now like the oppressive heat of humidity was almost comforting next to that preternatural calm. At least in this, the chaos and confusion was all her own.

“Jadzia.” Kira’s hand was warm on the back of her neck, palm flattened against the cool skin, and Dax glanced up from her knees to find her sitting beside her, legs outstretched and expression earnest. “Listen to me,” she urged again. “You’re home. You’re home, and you’re safe. And whether you want to believe it or not, you are whole.”

“I don’t feel whole.” Admitting it was hard. “I feel like I’m broken.”

“You’re damaged,” Kira corrected softly. “There’s a difference.” She smiled again when Dax just stared at her, but there were no tears in her eyes this time; sorrow, yes, deep and powerful, but no tears. “Broken things have to be repaired. They need someone else to make them whole again. You don’t need that, any more than I needed it after the occupation.” Her smile was so beautiful that Dax’s breath caught and rattled in her chest. “You never tried to force yourself on me, did you? You just sat there and let me work through my anger, through my pain, through everything I felt. You knew what I needed — not to be healed, but a little time and a safe space to heal for myself. You understood that, and you never pushed me. You let me heal, let me repair my own damage. And I did.”

“You did,” Dax whispered, blinking back enough tears for both of them.

“I did.” She leaned in, lips brushing Dax’s cheek. “And so will you.”

Dax tried to believe her. She remembered that Kira, what she was and what she became, and she ached to believe that it was possible for her too. But she hadn’t believed it even before she’d left for the other universe. Back on the runabout, with Kira’s whispers of faith and strength echoing in her ears, even then she’d struggled to believe it was true. Now, after everything that had happened, it was even harder, even more impossible. It wasn’t just about Joran any more, wasn’t just about the violence seething inside of her. It was about Jadzia, about her own mistakes, mistakes she’d made independent of his influence. It was the damage she’d done and the reasons why. How could she believe that she would heal from that? Did she even want to?

She sat there for a long time, hugging her legs and rocking on the bed, taking comfort in the subtle motions of the mattress beneath her. Kira sat with her, just as silent if a little more still; she kept that warm hand at the back of her neck, encouraging but not forceful, and let the other steady her own weight on the shifting mattress. She didn’t try to interrupt, didn’t try to push her point, didn’t do or say anything at all; she just sat there by her side and stayed with her as Dax rode out the conflict inside her head, the sudden ache to believe and the still-stubborn need to turn her back on anything that might vindicate her, anything that might make those terrible deeds all right.

“I don’t want to feel like this,” Dax admitted at last. “I don’t want to keep feeling this way. I feel so guilty and so angry. And then I feel guilty because I’m angry, and get angry because I’m feeling so guilty. I don’t want to hate myself and I don’t want to want you to hate me. But I do. And I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I do. I do want you to hate me, and I do hate myself.”

Kira sighed. “Jadzia.”

“I missed you,” Dax sighed. “I missed you so much, Nerys, while I was over there. I missed you so much, and I hate that I can’t look at you any more. I hate that I’m finally back, I’m finally home, I’m finally with you, but I can’t even look at you. I hate it, and I don’t want to feel it any more.”

Kira nodded. “I know you don’t,” she said. “I know you don’t want to hurt or hate any more. And I also know that you’re scared of what will happen if you let yourself stop.” Her hand slid down from Dax’s neck, ghosting across the space between her shoulders and sliding down to rest at her back. “You’re scared that if you let go of all that guilt and pain, it’ll mean you have to forgive yourself. You’re scared that if you stop torturing yourself over what you did and felt, that’ll mean you have to accept it. You think that if you refuse to let yourself drown in what you did, you’ll let yourself become the person you tried so hard not to be. You think letting go is the same as giving in, but it’s not. It’s not.”

Dax thought about that. She thought about Joran, how he was still there but so much easier to control now, how much more a part of her. She thought about how much stronger she’d felt since she’d allowed his fury to fuel her tirade against the Intendant after that fateful trip to Ore Processing. She felt connected to him now, at least more so than she had been, and through him she felt connected to the violence and the ferocity inside of her, to the anger and the rage that had once been so insurmountable. Even when she did lose control, it didn’t feel as frightening now as it had before, and she was no longer paralysed with panic over every momentary flash of temper.

But that was different. Joran wasn’t responsible for Keiko’s death; in fact, if he’d been in control, she probably wouldn’t have died at all. Joran didn’t care about Keiko O’Brien, or anyone else, and there would have been no moment of recognition, no flash of empathy. He would have been as heartless and calloused in Ore Processing as he was everywhere else. He would have been exactly what the Intendant had wanted Dax to be, and it would all have turned out just fine.

It was Jadzia’s fault that Keiko was dead, not his. Jadzia and her illicit feelings, Jadzia and her weakness and her heart stitched and patched on her sleeve for everyone to see. Jadzia Dax, who could not hide anything from the Intendant because she looked so much like her beloved Nerys. Jadzia Dax, and she alone was responsible for Keiko’s death, just as she alone bore the weight of not being able to help the other Jadzia, the one who had needed her. It was all too easy to blame Joran for every terrible thing she felt, but she knew that she couldn’t blame him for any of the terrible things she actually did.

“I thought he was the worst thing I’d ever have inside me,” she said out loud, as though verbalising all that conflated guilt would somehow make it easier to separate. “I thought if I could handle his memories… if I could overcome all those thoughts and feelings, all that violence… if I could just learn to control his anger…” She hunched over, chin pressing onto her knees. “I thought, if I could just do that, I’d never have to be afraid of anything else ever again. I thought if I could just survive _him_ … you know?” She let out a low, tortured sound, guttural in her throat, and Kira rubbed her back to soothe her. “But I’m so much worse than him. Everything he thought, everything he felt, everything he was… none of that mattered in the end, because it was all me. He didn’t make me do any of it. Honestly, I don’t think he would have done any of it in the first place. It was all me. I did it all by myself.”

“You didn’t do anything,” Kira told her. “The Intendant killed Mrs O’Brien, not you. The other… Jadzia… dragged you over there to help her, and you tried. You did your best with what you had, and you can’t blame yourself because it wasn’t enough. Not being able to help someone isn’t a crime, Jadzia, and you tried so hard to help her that you lost yourself. No-one could ask for more than that.”

Dax sniffled, feeling tearful. “It wasn’t enough.”

“That doesn’t make it something terrible,” Kira said. “And calling my name in bed with the monster who shares my face?” She leaned in to press her lips against Dax’s once more, chaste and loving. “Did you really believe I would hate you for that? Didn’t you stop to think that I might understand?”

“Why would I think that?” Dax asked. “I don’t understand, and I’m the one who did it.”

Kira sighed. Her hand was still moving in calming rhythm across the plane of Dax’s back; if it hadn’t been, Dax would have sobbed. “You didn’t do anything, Dax,” she said. “Not to Keiko, or to Jadzia, or to me. You didn’t hurt any one of us, not with your own hands.” She shook her head, as if in wonder, seeming to retreat into her own head for a moment. “Do you know how many nights I spent during the occupation, lying awake and torturing myself over my kills for that day, wishing I could have the luxury that you have?”

Dax raised her head, frowning. “What luxury?”

“What luxury? You didn’t hurt anyone! You didn’t do anything! You were clumsy and you were stupid, and people got hurt and died because of it, and we both know that’s something you’re going to have to make your own peace with. But you didn’t do it yourself. By the Prophets, Dax, don’t you realise how great a gift that is? Do you have any idea what I’d give to be able to say that about myself? To be able to look at all those dead bodies and say _‘I’m not the one who killed them’_ or _‘someone else pulled the trigger’_? You have that. Don’t you see how lucky you are?”

Dax groaned. She thought about her guilt, the self-hatred and pain that slammed into her chest every time she let herself picture Keiko’s face. She thought of Jadzia, fighting off her own demons all alone, fighting off not just Joran but everything the symbiont had ever given her; she thought about her resentment, her anger, the unique brand of self-loathing, an exiled Trill stuck in a backwater corner of a backwater universe with just a screwed-up shadow of Benjamin Sisko to keep her sane. She thought of herself, too, and how sick she’d felt after that last time in the Intendant’s bed, how shaky her legs were as she tried to stand, how her feelings for Nerys had become tainted, how even her memories had been turned into something dirty.

Suddenly, she felt very small and very shallow.

“Look,” Kira went on, seeming to sense that she was finally breaking through to her. “I’m not saying that you need to stop feeling guilty altogether. I would never say that. What happened to Keiko was terrible and you were at least partly responsible for it, and you’re right to be hard on yourself. You’re right to feel guilty, to be ashamed of yourself. You’re right to feel the weight of her death on your shoulders. You’re right to do all of that.” She leaned right in, not for a kiss this time, but to look as deeply into her eyes as she could. “But you _did not kill her_. And it is very, very important that you start to make that distinction.”

Dax nodded.

Kira seemed surprised by how quick she was to yield, but she had the good sense not to say so out loud. She didn’t say anything at all, in fact, apparently realising that her point had been made; instead, she just moved in a little closer, letting her hand drop a little lower down Dax’s back, and bringing the other around to circle her body completely, holding her tight.

For once, Dax didn’t resist. She found herself leaning into the embrace, welcoming the warmth, the scent of Bajor, the sound of Kira’s breathing and the strength of her arms. It was still her natural instinct to pull back, to turn away from everything Kira was telling her, to pretend there was no truth in it; it was still reflexive in her to flinch and recoil and cower from her, and it surprised her as much as it did Kira to feel her own body respond not with retaliation and bared-teeth hissing, but with a hum of something that might once have been contentment. It wasn’t true contentment, not really, but it was warmth and love, and as she let Kira hold her for the first time without fighting, she let herself imagine that maybe she really was safe, that maybe she really was home.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed against Kira’s collarbone. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

The stuttering apologies came as naturally and readily as they ever did, but they didn’t feel the same. Kira’s confessions had tended to her regrets, washing them and dressing them like an infected wound made clean, hurting and sickly but better than they were; they had sanded down her memories, too, broken them up into little pieces of something she might one day be able to swallow. She’d swept away the taint of that universe and left in its place something unusual and unfamiliar, guilt without hate and remorse without pain, sorrow without the urge to destroy. It felt strange, a heavy and unfamiliar weight bearing down inside her chest and pressing on the symbiont in her stomach; it made her belly feel tight and full and her lungs swell open a little more easily when she tried to breathe. It made her feel connected, linked, joined to all the different pieces of herself. It made her feel whole.

“Don’t apologise.” Kira’s lips shaped the words against the crown of her head, punctuated by tender little half-kisses, delicate and full of feeling. “Remember, and regret… but don’t apologise.”

Dax nodded again, and let the moment stretch out between them in silence. Kira’s breathing was smooth and even, rhythmic, and as hard as she tried not to let it influence her, Dax couldn’t help but find it calming. It was impossible not to draw comfort from Kira, from her warmth, her quiet strength, and above all her faith. She was so far removed from everything she’d once been, so different from the belligerent former terrorist that Dax had first met, the post-traumatic Bajoran who didn’t know how to be free, who had been unable to process anything but anger for so long. She breathed so smoothly now, so calm, steady and free, and Dax let herself bask in that, and bask too in those words, those promises, the understanding that she’d fought so hard to resist and ignore and deny, the impossible idea that maybe she could be free too, that even Jadzia Dax was not beyond saving.

“Do you want me to stay for a while?” Kira asked, shattering the silence.

Just a few minutes ago, Dax would have turned her away without hesitation. She would have cast her out with a scowl and a clenched jaw, insisting that she was fine by herself, that she hadn’t asked for her company and she didn’t want it. She didn’t want Kira’s forgiveness, didn’t want her understanding or her compassion; she didn’t want Kira at all. Just the sight of her had been painful, and it had been beyond her to even think of being close like this, of resting in her arms, of being held without being taken, of letting that be enough. It had been unfathomable, and to the part of her that was still indulging Joran it had been unbearable. There was too much tenderness in this soft-souled Kira, too much kindness, too much faith. There was too much _Nerys_ , and she had not been able to endure that.

Now, though, there was nothing in any universe that she wanted more. Nerys, and her arms around her, her lips on Dax’s skin, warm breath and strong limbs. Nerys, and the softer thing she saw in Jadzia, in Dax, in whoever she was in this moment, in whatever sliver of herself that Nerys could see. Nerys, and her strength and her faith and her embrace and her kisses. Nerys, telling her again and again that she was safe and free, that she was home, that she was _whole_.

Whole, and only a little damaged.


	37. Chapter 37

The world around them slowed to a crawl.

Outside the window, the sun finished its descent, but Kira didn’t complain that she hadn’t got to see it. She just watched with wordless reverence as the shadows lengthened across the floor and crawled up the opposite wall, smiling as the clouds outside darkened, the drizzle of rain turning to silver streaks rapping harmlessly against the window pane. She looked so peaceful, so serene, as close to contentment as Dax had ever seen in her, but still she felt compelled to apologise for making her miss her evening with Bareil.

“I’m sorry—” she started, but Kira cut her off before she could say anything more, knowing exactly what she was going to say without having to hear the words.

“We can go tomorrow instead,” she said, and Dax was struck by how radiant she was, bathed in the fading glow of sunset, laser-like beams of dimming light pouring in through the glass, reflected through the tiny silver lenses of all those raindrops and bouncing impossibly off the smile lifting her lips. In seven lifetimes, Dax had never seen anything nearly so beautiful. “And the invitation is still open if you want to join us.”

Dax returned her smile, though not nearly so dazzlingly. “I think I’d like that…” she murmured, and closed her eyes to burn the sight of all this onto her memory.

She could still feel the warmth of Kira’s smile in the way she pressed her lips against her cheek, then her temple. They were light little points of contact, barely touches at all and still keeping carefully clear of her mouth, but Dax let them sweep her up, lulled by the ebb and flow, the subtle rhythm of her breathing, of their breathing. Kira knew how to calm her; Dax wondered how many of her fellow Bajorans she comforted like this during the occupation, or even afterwards. Was she so good at this because she was well-practiced, or was she just gifted? She supposed it didn’t really matter either way; comfort was comfort, and it had been so long since Dax had allowed herself to be comforted by anything that she couldn’t bring herself to care.

For a long time it was enough. Simply existing, and existing in the same space as Nerys… it was enough. Wrapped up warm and safe in her arms, as close to content as she could remember ever being, she felt like she was home, felt like she was safe and whole, felt like this life was one she might yet be able to live out. She didn’t feel quite like herself, but she felt almost like the distorted reflection of herself that Kira claimed she saw when she looked at her. It wasn’t much, but for a time it was enough.

Moments passed into minutes, and the minutes ticked on until Dax stopped counting them, stopped worrying about how much of Kira’s time she was monopolising, stopped wondering how deeply the night had fallen. Kira seemed content to hold her, content just to be with her, and Dax didn’t want to draw her attention to the passage of time. She would miss her too much if she left, she realised, and didn’t know whether to be glad or upset that she was able to feel so strongly for her, so affectionate and so clingy to the same woman that a few hours ago she couldn’t even look in the eye.

At long last, Kira broke the blissful silence, shifting slightly and craning her neck to look at her. “You look exhausted,” she said, a soft and simple observation.

Dax blinked, raising her head to look at her. She was tired, it was true, but the thought of admitting it still chilled her. After the dream she’d had after her unpleasant beam-in, she wasn’t exactly enamoured with the idea of opening herself up for more. She’d thought she was past the point of being afraid of her dreams, afraid of falling too deep inside her head and her thoughts, afraid of what her psyche would tell her, but the last one had brought all of that fear back. It was hard to be afraid right now with Kira holding her so close, but the words set off a klaxon inside of her, slamming a panic-button she hadn’t even realised she still had.

“I’m not tired,” she said.

The denial felt sharp-edged and strange, and she found herself struck by an unexpected memory, herself lying just like this with the Intendant, head fuzzy with bloodwine and body pulsing with unpleasant pleasantness in the aftermath of sex and pain and horror, insisting like a cranky child that she wasn’t tired, that she didn’t need to sleep off her inebriation, that she didn’t need anything.

Kira’s lips pressed to the spots at her temples, chasing the memory away, and Dax allowed it to happen, sighing and relaxing in her arms. “Yes, you are,” she chided.

“I’m not,” Dax said again. “I…”

She swallowed hard. She thought of asking if Kira would protect her, if she would stay with her while she slept and chase away her dreams just like she chased away her memories, but she didn’t want to seem even weaker than she already was. She didn’t want to look like a child, small and helpless and scared of her own subconscious. She was better than that; Kira deserved someone better than that. So, instead she just sighed, letting the weariness weigh the sound down, and feeling the discomfort shudder through it in quiet tremors.

“Jadzia.”

She flinched. “Don’t.”

“When was the last time you got some rest?” Kira asked softly. “And don’t say ‘when you arrived’. Beaming in from a parallel universe and immediately losing consciousness does not count as ‘rest’.”

“Of course it does,” Dax huffed. “I dreamed, didn’t I?”

As soon as she said it, she wanted to kick herself; Kira didn’t frown, but her expression flickered just a little, as though she could hear the words Dax hadn’t spoken, as though she knew everything Dax hadn’t wanted to say at all. Dax hated that; if she wasn’t feeling so calm, so comforted, she would have let herself get angry again. Instead, she just mustered a half-hearted scowl, a warning without words that Kira naturally ignored.

“Did you?” she pressed, the lightness of her tone belying the weight beneath it.

“Stop that,” Dax snapped, trying to channel her inner irritability as best she could while still feeling so safe and so warm. “I don’t need you to tell me what to do, Kira.”

For a moment or two, Kira didn’t say anything; she just sat there, watching Dax’s face, as though trying to gauge what she was feeling, whether to push her or let the subject drop, or perhaps to call her bluff. She must realise that Dax would have done anything for her, that she would curl up and sleep, even brave her dreams if she demanded it, but she didn’t push, didn’t insist, and didn’t ask her again. She just watched silently, and it was only when Dax opened her mouth to speak that Kira took the initiative and cut her off first.

“You look exhausted,” she said again, softer, but no less pointed.

The fire in her eyes, passionate but without reaching her voice, extinguished what little remained of Dax’s fighting instinct, and she breathed a deep, weary sigh. “Fine,” she muttered. “I am exhausted. Is that what you want to hear?”

“At least it’s honest,” Kira shrugged, unoffended by her aggression. “Do you want to get some sleep?”

The question was simple enough, and easily answered, but there was another one hiding unspoken beneath it. _‘Do you want me to leave you alone?’_ , she was really asking, and the idea filled Dax with dread. In truth, as much as she knew it would be admitting her weaknesses, she couldn’t think of anything in any universe that she wanted less than to be left alone with her dreams. She didn’t want to say the words out loud, didn’t want to give Kira the satisfaction of hearing them, not when she’d clearly seen the subtext already, but she did not want her to leave.

“I don’t…” she mumbled, then trailed off, feeling self-conscious. “I mean, I’m not really…”

Kira must have sensed her frustration, because she took her hands and smiled so warmly that Dax almost forgot the sun was gone. “Jadzia,” she said, ever so gently. “Do you want me to spend the night in here?”

A lump of emotion rose in Dax’s throat, and she swallowed hard. “Wouldn’t Bareil miss you?” she asked.

Kira shrugged. “I think he can survive on his own for one night, don’t you?”

She brushed a loose strand of hair out of Dax’s eyes, and looked deep enough into them that she couldn’t possibly miss the fatigue darkening them, or the fear behind the shadows. Dax tried to look away, but she knew there was no point; trying to hide her feelings from Kira was futile at the best of times, and she was too worn down now to make even a cursory effort.

“If you like,” she said, as careless as she could muster. “I don’t imagine you’ll be very comfortable here, though.”

Kira chuckled, dismissing the issue with a wave of her hand, and Dax was surprised to see a flash of relief colouring her eyes in the moment before cooler expressions burned it away. She actually wanted to stay the night, she realised. She was afraid that they would lose all the progress they’d made if she left, that Dax would go back to being angry and frightened and shaking with guilt, that she would hide herself away again if Kira left her alone for even an instant, that she’d crawl back behind her walls of trauma and self-hatred, that when the morning came she would once more be unable to look at her or speak her name.

She didn’t mention any of that aloud, though, and so Dax didn’t bother trying to reassure her. What was the point? They both knew Kira wouldn’t be convinced until they both awoke one morning, days or weeks or months from now, and realised that they were both all right. So, instead of wasting her breath and Kira’s time with hollow promises and empty words, Dax just arched up and let her lips trace the curve of Kira’s jaw, solid and strong as it tightened under her ministrations.

Kira pulled back before she could get close to her mouth, shifting to stand, and Dax didn’t understand the sudden tension in her posture. “All right,” she said, all business and sobriety. “I’ll go and tell Bareil.”

The room seemed to darken as she left, and though she wasn’t gone for very long, it was still plenty of time for Dax to start second-guessing herself. The sheets, like the air, grew cold very quickly without Kira’s body there to warm them, and though Dax was naturally disposed to enjoy the cold more than the heat, the sweat cooling on her skin was itchy and uncomfortable, and her muscles twitched with unwanted shivers, rebelling against the sudden excess of space and distance.

She felt very small, and very alone, and she wasn’t entirely sure whether that was a bad thing or not; it reminded her of where she’d been and what she’d done, and it brought back to the forefront all those things she would never let herself forget, even if Kira forced her to forgive herself for them. It hurt, but it was the kind of pain she knew she’d have to get used to, the kind of pain she wanted, and she let it wrap its icy arms around her in the absence of Kira’s warm ones.

It was a short while before Kira came back, but she was so quiet about it that Dax almost didn’t notice. She didn’t bother to knock on the door this time, just waltzed back into the room as though she owned it, still smiling that same soft smile that she’d worn as she left. Dax waved a weary greeting, and willed herself to at least try to return the smile, though it was wan and wholly unconvincing to either one of them.

During her absence, Kira had changed into a simple sleeping outfit. She looked rested already, like the simple act of putting on fresh nightclothes was as good as a full night’s sleep; Dax envied her for that, and quirked a brow at the shirt she held in her arms, pale blue and neatly folded. It was far too large to be her own, and Dax supposed with a sigh that it probably belonged to Bareil; still smiling, and never once taking her eyes off Dax, Kira placed it gently on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t think I have anything that would fit you,” she explained when Dax stared down at the thing with a puzzled frown. “I could have your things beamed down from the runabout if you’d prefer them, but Bareil thought it would be easier for tonight to just lend you something of his.”

Dax glanced down at herself, and was struck like a bolt of lightning by the realisation that she hadn’t thought to change out of Jadzia’s torn and tattered mercenary’s outfit. The clothes hung uselessly off her now, ripped in some places and stained in others, barely good for burning much less wearing, and yet she hadn’t thought to put on something new. She hadn’t thought to change into something that was hers, or even something that was Bareil’s, something that wasn’t soiled and stained by that terrible place. How long had she been back? A day, maybe even a day and a half? And she hadn’t even thought to change into something clean. She’d had ample opportunity, but she hadn’t thought to do it.

“I didn’t think to get changed…” she said aloud. The words came out slurred, a disbelieving mumble. “I didn’t even think to get changed.”

“That’s all right,” Kira said brightly, shrugging it off like it was nothing, like Dax wasn’t tangled up in the torn-up tatters of a screwed-up universe. “You had other things on your mind.”

That was no comfort, and Dax frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded, fumbling for someone else to blame. “Why didn’t you tell me to get changed?”

Kira’s smile faltered. It didn’t disappear completely, but it turned somber and sorrowful. “Even if I had, you wouldn’t have listened,” she said softly. “You were… you weren’t exactly in a good place, Dax. You didn’t want to look at me, much less listen to anything I might have said. And I didn’t think it was appropriate to ask Bareil to suggest it. You might have needed some help, and I thought it might be a little—”

“I can get changed without a chaperone,” Dax interrupted sharply. “And even if I couldn’t, I’ve been a man before. Four times, in fact. Do you really think I’d care if Bareil saw me naked?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t have,” Kira replied calmly. “But he’s still a vedek. Besides, it didn’t seem important. You weren’t offending anyone by wearing that outfit. You weren’t offending him and you certainly weren’t offending me, and we both thought it would be better if you decided for yourself when you felt ready to take it off. Like I said, you weren’t in a good place, and I thought—”

“Well, you thought wrong!” She was almost shouting now, and she hated herself for it but she just couldn’t stop. “You should have told me. You should have ordered me. You should have… you should…”

“Jadzia.” Her voice was a beacon of quietude and sobriety, and it silenced Dax in an instant. “Why is this so important to you? Why do you care if you forgot to get changed? It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Dax said, even as she knew it made no sense “It does matter, Nerys. It matters. It…” She trailed off, clenching her jaw; she felt shaken down to her bones, and she had no idea why. “It just _does_.”

“All right.” Kira mustered a sympathetic sigh, as though that response made perfect sense, as though Dax wasn’t being cryptic and moody for no apparent reason, as though she wasn’t being completely irrational in every possible way. “I’m sorry, Dax. I didn’t mean to make it sound like it was silly. If it matters to you, then it matters.” She took a breath, steadying them both. “Do you want to freshen up a little as well? We have a hot-water shower if you’d like to—”

“No!” The ferocity of the outburst startled her, and she struggled to recover herself. “I mean… no. Thank you. Not… not yet.”

Kira nodded. Dax almost hated the way she understood everything, no matter how unreasonable or outright confrontational. Even she didn’t really understand why she found herself so violently affected by such foolish and pointless things, why she felt so sick to think of herself wearing those awful clothes when she should have torn them from her body long before now, or why it frightened her on such a soul-deep level just to think of taking a shower. None of it made any sense, and the two ideals seemed so naturally connected; she couldn’t reconcile why it made her feel so terrible to think of being dirty in the very same moment that it horrified her to think of being clean. 

But Kira didn’t think it was strange at all. She just nodded and said “All right…” again, like it really was. Just “all right,” and “you don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” and worst of all, worse than anything else, again and again and again, “I understand.”

 _Don’t,_ Dax wanted to cry again. _Don’t understand. Don’t tell me it’s all right. Don’t pretend that any of this makes any sense at all._ But she couldn’t say it, couldn’t make her throat forge the words or her lips shape them. She could only stare up at Kira and down at the shirt on the bed, and think of Jadzia, of that broken-down woman and the torn-up clothing that barely covered her own battered body. She could only look down at the mess she’d become and tear those terrible clothes off her, ripping what little remained of the fabric until it was less than nothing, like she could rip apart that universe so easily, like she could rip the unwanted symbiont from the Jadzia who lived there, like she could rip the guilt out of herself too.

Kira sucked in her breath as Dax threw the remains of the fabric to the floor; it was a dreadful sound, a sickened little gasp that barely made it out of her throat. “Oh, Jadzia…” she choked, tears turning her eyes wide and horror draining the colour from her face, and it took Dax a very long moment to realise why. 

There was a mirror on the other side of the room, but she didn’t need to look into it to know what Kira was responding to, what she was seeing. She didn’t need to see it herself to know what she must look like. Blood and bruises, swelling and soreness, pain etched out deep and inescapable through gashes and lesions. Shallow little rivers of long-dried blood carved with deliberate cruelty by the Intendant’s hand, bruises and abrasions unwittingly inflicted by a Jadzia driven to madness by hallucinations or rage, all colouring over the fading shadows of her own self-inflicted wounds. Was it any wonder that Kira would gasp at that? Was it any wonder that her eyes would fill with tears, that she would choke out the name of the woman who was supposed to be her friend? Was it any wonder that she would be so affected?

Maybe not. But Dax did not want it.

“Don’t,” she said, cutting her off before she could say that name again. “Not this. Not again.” She heard Kira taking in her breath to force out a protestation, but she wouldn’t let her get the words out, silencing her with a vicious glare. “No. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t try and make me believe that this isn’t something I deserve. I did this to myself, Nerys, and I’m not going to let you make it into something else. I won’t let you make it something…” But she was faltering now too, and she swore under her breath as she fought to keep going. “It’s my fault. Don’t look at me like it isn’t.”

Kira sighed, seeming to know better this time than to try and argue. “That doesn’t make it okay,” she said instead. “You can’t make it okay by saying you deserve it. You can’t make it okay by saying you brought it on yourself. Jadzia, you’re…”

She trailed off, shaking her head, and when she turned her face away from the bruise-marred skin, her lip was trembling.

“I know what I am,” Dax said, quiet but furious. “I don’t need you to tell me, and I don’t need you to look at me like this is something new… like it’s something terrible, when it’s not. It’s less than I should have got.”

“Jadzia…” Kira closed her eyes, then sighed even heavier, realising that Dax would never let her say what she wanted to say, what she felt she needed to. And so, though it clearly cost her a great deal, she changed the subject completely. “You must be cold,” she mustered at last. “You should get changed and go to bed.”

Dax did get changed, though it felt strange to yield. She wasn’t ashamed, at least not exactly, but she felt exposed and uncomfortable under Kira’s scrutiny, judged in a way that made her feel edgy. Again, she found herself flinching back from the idea of sympathy, of compassion, of all those things, and she hated how naturally they came at the sight of all those bruises. Didn’t Kira see that they were only what she deserved? Didn’t she understand that she wanted them? Didn’t she realise that they were penance?

Bareil’s shirt didn’t fit particularly well, but it covered up most of the damage. The fabric hung loosely about her shoulders and was a little too short, leaving most of her thighs exposed; she wouldn’t have minded that so much, except Kira’s eyes kept lingering on the Intendant’s fingerprints, bone-deep branding that would not fade, and her lips twitched with anger in the moment before she caught herself and looked away. Dax tugged the shirt down as low as it would go, and pulled the sheets up to cover the rest.

It felt strange, the borrowed shirt and the borrowed sheets, borrowed things all around her. The shirt felt rough against her skin and smelled like a temple, like scented candles and reverence; it felt like faith and smelled like Nerys, and Dax felt very uncomfortable wearing it. She had dressed in vedek’s robes once before, and Kira had seen her then too, but somehow this felt so much more like sacrilege than that had. It felt like home, but someone else’s home, like she was invading the most precious corners of someone’s personal space. It felt incredibly intimate, and that was the last thing she wanted to feel just then.

Sensing her discomfort, Kira took her hand and smoothed the sheets about her legs. “It’s just something to sleep in,” she said. “It’s not like I’m taking you dancing in it.”

In spite of herself, Dax laughed. “That’s a shame,” she said, surprised by how easily the quip came to her, and how naturally it fit on her tongue. “I bet I’d turn a few heads, cutting a rug dressed like this.”

“You’d certainly turn mine,” Kira shot back before she could stop herself, then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth as she realised what she’d said.

Dax laughed again, louder, and allowed herself the luxury of letting it feel good. For the first time in almost longer than she could remember, she felt a little of her old exuberance flicker back to life inside her. Not much, and nowhere near enough to shut down the memories of what she’d done, but a little. A little bit of Curzon, a little bit of Torias, maybe even a little bit of the eager young woman that Jadzia had grown into over the last few years. For just a moment, as she threw her head back and laughed at the embarrassment on Kira’s face, she actually felt like Dax again, a Dax she could recognise, a Dax she thought she knew.

“Well then, Major…” She flashed a smile, and for the first time in weeks, it didn’t hurt. “Would you care to join me in bed?”

*

_Piece by piece, they put her back together._

_It was a slow, agonising process, and they didn’t give her anything to relieve the pain. Not that she would have accepted it, even if they had offered, of course. She wanted to be awake and aware; she wanted to feel every last stitch, every last tug of the thread as they pulled it through her. She wanted to know every last second of the process with all the intimacy she could, and how was she supposed to do that if she didn’t feel every twitch of pain as well?_

_It was exhausting, agonising, but she endured, determined to feel it all as they bound all her broken body parts back together like a twisted creature cooked up in a horror holo-novel. She wanted to feel it all, see it all, know it all. She wanted to experience the first impossible moment when her hands and legs became her own again, the first flash of dazzling, breathtaking light when they put her eyes back in, to gasp her first prayer of gratitude from her newly replaced tongue. She wanted to feel it all, to live it all for the first time and the thousandth. Just like a Trill, she would be born again._

_They worked in perfect harmony, labouring with the same precision and camaraderie they’d shown when they took her apart to begin with. Garak, ever the tailor even out here in the middle of nowhere, cut the thread and kept the wounds dressed and clean, measuring with precision and a keen, practiced eye. Keiko, the educator and intellectual, made sure that everything was done properly, observing and critiquing every stitch as though it were an examination. Jadzia… well, who knew Dax better than Jadzia, after all? Who better to talk the others through the complexities of general Trill anatomy or the unique peculiarities of a specific Trill named Dax? Who better to make sure that the right things were put in the right places?_

_Kira, of course, did the real work. While the others talked and tinkered, making sure the process was simple and efficient, discussing and learning and sharing their wisdom and experience, Kira was the one who got her hands dirty, the one who actually performed the task. She was the one who held the needle between steady fingers, the one who threaded it through flesh and over still-seeping wounds, the one who slowly but surely knitted everything all back together. She was the one who made the task complete, who stitched and slaved and laboured, who worked on the hollow husk of a body until Dax felt almost whole again._

_Almost, but not entirely. She wasn’t truly whole, not even now. She had her body back and mostly functional, but functional wasn’t the same as complete, and as hard as Kira worked to see the task complete, Dax was not. There was still something missing, something that no amount of stitching or threading could ever give back, and without it she would never be whole again. It pressed itself against the edge of her mind, forgotten memories that used to be hers and would never be again; she knew it was there, knew what it was supposed to be, but she couldn’t reach it. She couldn’t reach anything through the haze of pain and newly-returned limbs, body parts lost and then found, couldn’t focus on what she’d lost when she’d found so much, couldn’t bear to think of missing things when there was so much to experience again — sight and sensation, taste and touch, all learned again as though for the first time._

_The four of them cared for her while she healed, while the flesh and bones of her legs and hands knit back together, while her eyes remembered how they worked and her vision came back in blurry waves of half-blind half-sight, while her tongue stretched and remembered and tasted the roof of her mouth. The whole time, they didn’t leave her side, and in her weakened and healing state, she marvelled at the impossibility of that, the idea that these people she had so wronged would give up their own time, their own existences, to help her become better. She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t imagine it. What had she done to deserve so much kindness?_

_Keiko brought her fresh cool water, telling her in great detail how important it was to stay hydrated, while Garak held a napkin to her lips so she wouldn’t spill and waste any. “There’s never an excuse for poor table manners,” he muttered gravely, then broke into a broad grin to let her know that he was joking. Kira and Jadzia took turns standing watch over her, letting their shadows cast some shelter over her when the sun got too hot, and wiping the sweat from her brow as she sweltered._

_“You’ll be up and about in no time,” Jadzia told her with an earnest smile. “I would know.” Then she laughed and danced out of reach as Kira swatted at her arm and told her that she didn’t know anything at all. Dax tried to laugh as well, to lift her voice in an echo of Jadzia’s lightness, but her tongue hadn’t fully settled in her mouth yet, and the sound came out garbled and strange._

_She lost track of time, counting out the minutes and hours not by the ticking of a clock but by the pulses of agony that marked out the healing process. Kira told her it was natural, that nothing good ever came without pain, while Keiko took great pains to explain to her the medical science behind it, why healing wounds hurt almost as badly as fresh ones. Jadzia kept her spirits up with her laughter, and Garak suggested countless games to help her pass the time._

_Between them, they got her through it, and slowly but surely she started to feel more like herself, regaining function and sensation in slow-burning increments, remembering how her legs worked, clenching and unclenching her fingers just to bask in the fact that she had fingers once more and could use them at last. She was healing; with their help, she was healing. She knew that. She knew it, because every now and then she could actually taste the sand when she turned her head a little too far to the right and choked some into her mouth. She knew because she could ball her fists, and feel the itching of ground-down bones under her legs, because the sun was high and hot, and she could see it as well as just feeling its burn on her skin._

_She healed with their help, but healing had to end, and so did the need for help. As her senses returned, as her body returned to itself, as she remembered how to touch and taste and see, she found that the space between their comforts grew greater and greater. It was only once the pain had subsided completely and she was able to sit up and look around and move and see and think for herself that she realised she was alone. She did not need them any more, it seemed, and so they had left her, disappearing like ghosts along with her cries of pain._

_She was alone. It took a long moment for that to sink in, for her to realise what it meant. It meant that she was healed, and that meant that she was as whole as she could ever be without that elusive missing piece. She could stand if she wanted to. She could stand, and walk, run and hunt. She could do anything that she wanted to do. She had her hands and legs, her tongue and her eyes; she could do anything!_

_The desert spread out in all directions, an infinity of possibilities stretching as far as her new old eyes could see, and it was by pure instinct that she scrambled to her feet and squinted at the horizon. There were so many of them, so many horizons to strive for, so many places to seek out, so many directions to try, and she felt her rejuvenated limbs stretch and tingle with anticipation as she tried to figure out what she should do next, where she should go, which of those countless horizons she should turn her reborn body towards._

_But she didn’t know. She didn’t know where to go or what to do, and she definitely didn’t know what she wanted. Any one of those horizons could lead her to what she needed, and any one could lead her to another wasted death. Though she was healed and healthy, something still felt wrong, some part of her still broken and confused, that elusive something she’d lost. She felt better, but she still didn’t feel like herself yet. She was still missing something important, the natural instincts that told her where to go and what to do, the mind and the heart and the soul that knew what to think and how to feel and who she was._

_It was Dax, she realised, and felt weak in her new knees as she looked down in horror at the gaping chasm where her stomach had been._

_Who was she without Dax? What was she without the symbiont? Jadzia had disappeared along with the others, and she had taken that piece of her name with her. She wasn’t Jadzia; Jadzia was the one who had stolen her legs and then given them back, the one who had tried to remind her what it mean to be Trill and then disappeared when she could stand on her own. Once, perhaps, that Jadzia had torn out her heart and eaten it, but that was a long time ago and far away from here, and she couldn’t remember it now. Those were Dax’s memories, not hers. They didn’t belong to the lonely and isolated little creature staggering through a desert made of ground-up bones. Those memories weren’t hers, not any more. Not without Dax._

_And then she saw him. A half-formed silhouette, ghostly and shimmering on the horizon, as indistinct as a mirage, but she would recognise him anywhere. She didn’t need to see his face or hear his voice or know the evil inside him. Not now. She would know him now, even if she was still blind and crippled and worthless._

_She tried to call his name, to scream at him, but the hot wind caught her voice and carried it away, another decaying victim of this death-borne desert. Her voice was useless, even with her new tongue, and so she made use of her new legs instead, and ran. Hard and fast, tripping over the scattered sand dunes, tripping over her own feet, tripping and stumbling over everything she passed, she ran. She ran after him like she had never run after or from anything in all her life._

_“Joran!” she shouted, again and again, and though the desert winds stole the words from her throat, he seemed to hear them just the same._

_“What do you want from me?” he shouted back, then laughed in her face when she finally reached him, a second or a lifetime later. “You have no place with me any more, little girl.”_

_“You took what was mine!” Though she was howling with all her strength, her voice was impossibly small. “You took my symbiont, and I want it back!”_

_He smiled at her, that twisted and sinister smile that still chilled her to the bone, even now. His eyes were keen and sharp, as bright and blue as Jadzia’s, and they pierced her so much more efficiently than the serrated knife-edge that had left her crippled. But then, he’d always been able to twist her insides like that, hadn’t he? He’d always been able to take her and break her and turn her into something terrible. Why should it be any different now that he wasn’t inside her as well? She would be a fool if the sight of his face stopped frightening her now just because he had to dig his fingers in to get inside._

_“It’s not your symbiont any more,” he said, and that deadly smile grew even wider, preemptive triumph clashing with elation as those bright blue eyes cut through the hole in her stomach. “It’s mine, and you can’t have it back.”_

_The chasm in her abdomen started to ache again under his gaze, a dull pulsing throb of constant pain that reminded her of all she had lost, all she wanted back. It felt like the bellyaches she used to get as a child, but this time there was no medicine to ease the discomfort and no mother’s compassion to make her feel better. It was nothing like the pain she’d endured as she’d healed, and she thought back to the last few hours with a pang, the healthy pain of being put back together, the white-hot screams of flesh grafting to flesh and bone knitting to bone, the soothing sounds of their voices as they eased her suffering, Garak and Keiko and Kira and Jadzia, the four of them arguing among themselves and talking softly to her, taking her apart and then putting her back together. It had worked; she was better now than she had been, stronger and braver and wiser, but oh the pain she had to go through to get there. This was nothing like that, and she ached in her heart as well as her belly to wish that they were here with her now._

_“You don’t deserve it!” she shouted, into the wind and into his smiling face. “You weren’t suitable. You weren’t suitable, and I’m the one who had to suffer for that. You took the symbiont, and you took their lives, and I won’t let you take mine too! I won’t let you take me, and I won’t let you take Dax.” She stepped right into his personal space, swallowing down the fear and panic, powering past the loss still throbbing in her stomach, ignoring the wet sound as her organs spilled out through that huge horrible hole, feeding the choked bone-sand. “You won’t take me! You won’t take my symbiont, and you won’t take me!”_

_“Oh, but I already have,” he reminded her, as calm and careless now as he ever was, as though her presence was little more than an irritation, as though she was no threat at all. “It’s my symbiont now. And you know as well as I do that the host dies when the symbiont is removed. You’re living on borrowed time now.” His smile shifted, becoming something deranged, nearly feral, and she felt the sharp edges of his teeth as though they were tearing into her flesh. “But then, you always were, weren’t you? You’ve been living on borrowed time as long as you’ve been living.”_

_She would not flinch, and she would not back down. “If I am,” she shrugged, “it’s my time, not yours.”_

_He conceded the point with another vicious laugh. “Maybe. But that won’t do you any good in the end, will it? You have no more autonomy over your time than you did over your symbiont. It might as well belong to me, just like everything else, for all it’ll do you to claim it as your own.”_

_“But it doesn’t belong to you,” she said, and hearing the words out loud felt like a vindication; for the first time, she truly understood what they meant, what it meant to claim something as her own, what it meant for her, and for him as well, for the two of them, connected but still separate. “So maybe I can’t do anything about it. But neither can you. You can’t destroy me. You never could.”_

_“Don’t be so sure,” he replied._

_She took a deep, steadying breath. She was still afraid, but the fear was like her body, healed and healthy, and it didn’t matter that her guts were spilling out from the place he’d ripped open; she was healed and she was whole, and he couldn’t end her just by tearing her insides out._

_The fear took on a new face now; it was more like a kind of awareness, a memory of who he was and what he was capable of coupled with a slowly rising certainty that he could not touch her. They were connected, for all that it meant for them both. They were connected, and he could no more destroy her than she could have destroyed him when his symbiont was hers. She was afraid, yes, but she was not afraid of him. Not now. Whatever he may have, he did not have her. She was not a little girl any more, and she would would not allow him to frighten her._

_“You took something that wasn’t yours,” she said, speaking as much to herself as to him. “And maybe I can’t change that. Maybe I can’t stop it from happening. I can’t undo the terrible things you’ve done in Dax’s name, and I can’t resurrect the things you’ve destroyed. But I can refuse to let you destroy me too. You’ve done enough damage, and you’ve taken enough lives. I won’t let mine be next. I won’t give you the satisfaction of seeing me die as well.” She spat in his face. “You don’t deserve that.”_

_He chuckled, but it was softer than the ringing laughter of before. “You’ll still die, whether you let me see it or not.”_

_“Maybe,” she said, and turned away. “But I will die on my terms, not yours. You may own my symbiont, but you do not own me.”_

_She didn’t need to look at him to know that he was smiling, but she turned back to meet it anyway, just so he would know that she was not afraid. “You can’t deny me, you know,” he told her._

_“I’m not trying to,” she said, returning his smile without flinching. “I know what you are, and I know who you are. I know that you’re a part of me. And I know that I can’t ever change that. I don’t need the symbiont to tell me, and I sure as hell don’t need you.”_

_“So what are you going to do?” he sneered. “Why did you come here?”_

_“I came here to be free of you.” She didn’t know where the words came from, but as she said them, she felt them resonate with every part of her, every piece of herself the others had stitched back together, and all the other parts that had always been in her. “I came here to end this.”_

_“And how do you plan on doing that?” He took a long step back, gesturing at the hole in her abdomen. “Silly little girl. You don’t have the stomach to kill me.”_

_“I don’t want to kill you,” she said, and let the simple truth of it bring her some peace. “There’s been enough killing here already, by your hand and mine. More won’t solve anything. It won’t make me forget you. It won’t undo what you’ve done to me, or to the countless others you’ve hurt and killed and abused. Killing you won’t end you, and it won’t give me my symbiont back.”_

_“Then what?” It was a challenge, crude and dismissive. “Look at you, little girl! You’re small and weak and pathetic. You’re nothing. Your little friends might have put you back together, but you’re still dying, aren’t you? Your symbiont is mine, and we both know you’re nothing without it. What good is a new body when you don’t have the strength or the courage to use it? You can’t even save yourself; what could you possibly do to me?”_

_He laughed again, but the sound was hoarse and sickly, and when he was finished his lips were spotted with blood, and the ice in his eyes turned to water._

_He knew the answer. He knew the answer, and that knowledge was his undoing. Suddenly, she was the one in control, piercing him, holding the moment in her hand while he backed away. Suddenly, he was the one with fear shaking through his limbs, mouth gone slack with terror, sickly and and defeated, open in a silent scream. Suddenly, he knew; suddenly, they both did._

_It was over. Even before she gave her answer, the only answer she had left, the one thing she could do that he couldn’t, the one thing she had that would condemn him for good… even before she said it, even before she opened her mouth, lips split into a smile so much more terrifying than his own, he knew. She had won, and defeat was the last thing he would ever know._

_“What will you do?” he asked again, a blood-choked whisper drowned in fear. “What will you do to me?”_

_“What else?” She let her smile turn soft. “I forgive you.”_

*

She woke to beautiful Bajoran eyes.

Kira was sitting half-upright, bracing with her elbow on the pillow. Her eyes, those beautiful eyes, were half-lidded and hazy with sleep, but as Dax stumbled back to consciousness, they were more alive and more radiant than anything she’d seen in eight lifetimes. There was home behind those eyes, and Dax felt the smile lingering from the dream widen and brighten, becoming something real, made pure by Kira and the way she was looking at her.

“You’re awake,” she said, voice rusty but etched with a sort of quiet awe.

Dax chuckled just as hoarsely. “I’m awake,” she confirmed with a yawn.

Kira brushed some of the loose hair from her eyes, letting her the contact linger behind her ear for a moment or two longer than it really needed to. The awe in her eyes radiated out to cover her whole face, illuminating the space between them as she leaned in to replace her fingertips with her lips, and when she spoke again she whispered the words like cherished secrets.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

Dax blushed, feeling the smile fall from her face, and looked away. “I’m sorry about that,” she mumbled. “It happens sometimes. I didn’t…”

“No.” Kira was smiling in her place now, bright and radiant in the pale morning light, and it almost made Dax forget that she was embarrassed. “Don’t be sorry, Jadzia. It was nice to hear you talk without trying to hold yourself back. For the first time since you got back, you sounded almost like yourself. You sounded… peaceful.” She leaned back, so Dax could see her whole face. “You said—”

“I know what I said,” Dax said.

She sat up, feeling suddenly uncomfortable lying there. Bareil’s borrowed shirt was ill-fitting and crumpled by sleep, and the borrowed sheets beneath her felt too crisp and too clean. She was suddenly very aware of the dirt clinging to every part of her, dried blood that stood out starkly against her pale skin and fading blue-black bruises that blended almost perfectly with the patterns of her spots, the stain of that place covering her whole body, all carefully hidden away by a shirt that wasn’t hers, sheets that weren’t hers, and a too-big bed that wasn’t hers either. She felt dissociated, groggy, the shame of reality clashing against the half-haunted revenants of peace she’d found at last in her dream.

Kira sat up as well, following Dax’s lead as she scrubbed her face to banish the sleepiness. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, shifting away a little to keep a respectful distance. “Was it a bad dream?”

Dax swallowed thickly. “It was a dream,” she said simply.

Kira’s fingers flexed, smoothing out the creases in the sheet at the edge of the bed. She looked uncertain, like she wanted to reach out but knew better than to try. “Dax…”

Dax closed her eyes, trying to process what she felt, and where all those different fragments of feeling were coming from. She’d had so many dreams, mostly bad, though they hadn’t felt that way at the time, and she had done so many terrible things under the veil of her subconscious. She remembered the Intendant with her cruel mocking smile, wondering aloud if Dax secretly wanted Kira to know about them all, the twisted and sordid things she did to her in those dreams, the way she’d slept with her and then killed her, the way she’d ripped her heart out and eaten it again and again and again. Would Kira understand if she told her? Would she recoil? Would she go running back to Bareil, lamenting that her friend couldn’t be saved after all?

Dax didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know. Her dreams were her own, and they would stay that way. Let the Intendant use her confessions however she wanted, but Kira was not the Intendant, and Dax would not give those dark things up to a Kira who had worked so hard to find her way back into the light. Just thinking about it made her heart ache.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud, clearing her throat. “I’m awake now. I’m awake, and I’m still here. Who cares what I was dreaming about?”

“I care,” Kira replied, very quietly. “It’s so hard to break through to you right now, Jadzia. You’re so far away. So distant.”

“I’m not,” Dax said. Somehow, it felt important to make Kira believe that, even if she couldn’t really believe it herself. “I know where I am. I’m here. I’m here, and I’m with you, and I know that.”

Whether or not she was actually convinced, Dax couldn’t tell, but Kira’s features relaxed a little just the same. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re here, and you’re with me. And I know that you know that. I’m not trying to…” She trailed off. “It’s just… you look so haunted.”

Dax closed her eyes for a moment. “I know.”

When she opened them again, Kira’s expression had darkened, turned thoughtful and troubled. “Is that what I looked like after the occupation?” she asked. “Haunted?”

Dax thought about it. She remembered how easy it was back then to smile and nod and let Kira’s anger wash over her, to let her pour out everything that made her hurt, to take it in and let Kira feel freer once it was out of her. It had been so easy to stand there, quiet and unaffected, to take the daily barrage of verbal assaults and thrown PADDs and everything else that had made the station’s first officer so intolerable to most of the other Starfleet officers during those first few weeks.

She remembered the look in Kira’s eyes, so obvious to a soul as old as Dax even as Jadzia found it new and upsetting, the hollow void where feeling should be, the vast empty space that had once been filled with chaos and now didn’t know what to do with itself, and just beyond it the raw and visceral fear of what that nothingness meant. It had been so easy to deal with all of that; Dax had taught Jadzia how, and Kira hadn’t needed very much help to get where she was going anyway. In many ways, that was so much easier than this.

“You weren’t haunted,” she said at last, speaking softly and shuffling a little closer to take Kira’s hand in hers. “You were just… I think you were just a little lost.”

Kira snorted, but didn’t disagree. “Are you saying you found me?”

“No.” She didn’t know why the question stung like an insult, but it did. “You found yourself. I just helped where I could. And, honestly, not even that much.”

“You helped more than you thought you did,” Kira said, suddenly almost tearful.

Dax swallowed again, feeling moisture prick behind her own eyes too. This line of conversation was better, she thought. Less painful, at least inside herself, even as it cut to look at Kira’s face and see the shadows of past trauma still flickering between the lines. She wanted to apologise, to turn the discussion away from the occupation, away from Kira’s bad memories, but the self-preservationist inside her couldn’t bear to turn it back on herself. Kira could handle her own struggles; she’d known them for longer, and they were older in her than Dax’s old struggles kicking inside young Jadzia. Talking about Kira kept her focused; it kept her grounded in this place, this universe, and here on Bajor. It gave her a constant flow of empathic memory, of where she was and who she was, the good things she’d seen in this universe licking like candlelight against the dark deeds she’d done in the other one.

Kira allowed herself a moment’s introspection, a moment to dwell on who she used to be and how hard she’d fought to come back from that, but when she came back out from herself, there was a determination in her eyes that said Dax had hidden for long enough.

“You’re not lost, though,” she said, ignoring the way that Dax flinched. “You’re just haunted. You’re so haunted, and I don’t… I don’t know how to chase away the things that are haunting you. It’s always so much more complicated with you, Dax. You Trills, with your symbionts and your hundreds of lifetimes. It’s so complicated, and I don’t know how to help. I don’t know how to help you come back to yourself. Honestly, I don’t even really know who ‘yourself’ is. I know so little of you, and there’s so much I don’t know at all.”

“You know me,” Dax said, and for a moment she didn’t know why it resonated so deeply.

“I want to.” Kira’s smile was shaky. “I cherish you so much, but sometimes I feel like the person I talk to is just a a tiny part of something so much older than me, so complicated and so endless…”

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Dax told her, breathless and tearful. “So complicated, and so endless.”

Kira turned her palm upwards, squeezing Dax’s. “I wish I knew how to help.”

“You do,” Dax said, and was momentarily overwhelmed by how true that was.

Her breath caught as she thought of the Intendant again, flinching in spite of herself as the memory struck, the derision in her eyes, the disbelief and disdain when she heard those words for the first time — _‘my Nerys’_ — and knew exactly what they meant. Dax hadn’t needed to tell her, hadn’t needed to say anything else at all, just _‘my Nerys’_ , and she had known and understood.

“You do help,” she said again, feeling hallowed. “You ground me, Nerys. You’re my tether, my anchor. You’re my home. At least, right now, you are. You’re my… you’re my…”

“Yes,” Kira breathed, understanding so much more than the words, holding out so much more than help. “I’m yours.”

She leaned in, letting her head drop down to rest on Dax’s shoulder. Dax didn’t flinch away this time, and she didn’t think of the Intendant at all. She just closed her eyes and let Kira breathe in the fabric of her shirt, Bareil’s shirt, his scent mingling inexorably with Dax’s.

They were so different, she thought, so many light-years away from each other, different species with vastly different ideals; they were completely different people on every level that mattered. Bareil was a spiritual leader, a healer and a priest, a religious figure who peddled in hope and faith and wisdom. He was loved and respected; when he spoke, people listened because what he said was important.

Dax was nothing like that. She was a Trill who drank too much and thought too little and talked too loudly; all she had to offer was her sense of humour and the patience that came with half a dozen lifetimes, and even those weren’t truly hers. She hadn’t earned that patience; just like Bareil’s shirt, it was a borrowed cast-off, hard-earned by other people who had bled for her right to wear their experiences. The two of them were as different as two souls could possibly be, and yet suddenly Kira was looking at her as though they were the same after all.

“It’s different,” Kira mused, speaking mostly to herself, as though she’d read Dax’s mind. “But in a way, it’s not so different at all.”

Maybe she was talking about herself, her own experiences, those first few months on Deep Space Nine after the occupation. Maybe she was talking about what Dax had been through in the other universe, the horrors she’d seen and the terrible things she’d done. Maybe she was looking at Dax and seeing someone who had been through something, someone who had hurt and suffered and lost themselves in a dark and desolate place. Maybe they were the ones who weren’t so different after all. Maybe. But when she said the words, toying with the hem of the shirt as though its creases held all the secrets of the galaxy, all Dax could think of was Bareil and Nerys and their boundless Bajoran faith.

“It’s not so different at all,” she agreed, and tilted Kira’s chin upwards until their lips met. “Thank you.”

Kira’s kiss was impossibly tender, just like she was. The rough edges, the scars of the occupation, all those nightmarish things that had so defined her for so long were gone, dissolved like shadows chased away by the sunbeams creeping across the room. This wasn’t the Kira Nerys that Dax had first met, the angry young woman who had thrown a PADD at her head for being too cheerful. She wasn’t the furious post-occupation terrorist who didn’t know anything but anger. She was a new Kira, a new Nerys, but Dax was slowly coming to realise that this was the Nerys she had feelings for, the Nerys she’d come to think of as hers. This woman, who had been so dark and had now stepped so completely into so much light… this young woman who held faith above fury and compassion above vengeance… this woman who had come so far and become so much in so short a time… this was _her Nerys_ , truly and completely.

“You are mine…” she whispered, awestruck. “I mean, you’re really _mine_.”

It wasn’t about this moment. It wasn’t about the warm mouth that pressed against hers or the arm wrapped around her waist. It wasn’t about the passion and compassion, the affection that she felt radiating out from her, the staccato heartbeat that sounded like faith. It wasn’t about lips and teeth and tongue, Kira’s hand sliding under the shirt, palm pressed flat against the cool flesh over Dax’s ribcage, reminding them both that they were alive. It wasn’t about being here, about being in bed, about being pressed up against a woman called Kira Nerys, about sharing breath and bodies and the sunlight bathing them both. That was beautiful and breathtaking and perfect, and Dax felt her skin ignite for the first time in forever with a pleasure that didn’t couple with pain… but it wasn’t about that. When she called Nerys _hers_ , she wasn’t talking about that at all.

It was about who they were. It was about Kira Nerys, whoever she had been and whoever she would yet be. It was about Jadzia Dax, so old and yet so young. It was about what they meant to each other and what they meant to themselves.

She thought about Benjamin. Hers, yes, but the other Jadzia’s as well. That Jadzia had an honest claim to her Benjamin Sisko; she had chosen him for herself, worked alongside him and taken him to her bed, not out of any obligation to past memories, but because she wanted to, because she liked him. For good or for ill, she had chosen her Benjamin Sisko, and he was hers.

Dax couldn’t say the same. She hadn’t chosen her friendship with Benjamin at all; she’d simply clung to it because it felt familiar, one last remnant of the old man who held such a fondness for his young friend. Curzon had planted that seed in the symbiont’s head long before Jadzia had ever known either of them, and though their relationship had some subtle differences, it still felt very much like an echo of his. In Benjamin’s company, she felt more like Curzon than she did anywhere else, even when she was among his Klingon friends, even when she was beating Quark at tongo. Being with Benjamin was being the old man afresh, and though she relished the pride and wisdom that came with it, sometimes she envied it a little too. Sometimes it made her feel very small. Benjamin Sisko wouldn’t have acknowledged Jadzia at all if he didn’t already feel soul-bound to Curzon.

But Kira was different. Kira never knew Curzon. Jadzia was Kira’s first Dax. And that meant that Kira, in the purest sense, was _hers_. Kira had never met Curzon or Torias or Audrid or any of them. She didn’t know what Dax was like before Jadzia, or what Jadzia was like before Dax. She didn’t know how much stronger the symbiont was inside Curzon, how much braver in Torias, how much softer in Audrid, and she didn’t know how much weaker Jadzia was without it. She didn’t know any of that, and she never would. Kira had only ever known the Dax that was now; she had only ever known Jadzia Dax, and when she smiled up at her through the golden glow of sunset or the pale breath of morning, Jadzia Dax was the only person she would ever see. Benjamin would always see the parts of her that were Curzon, but Kira could only see _her_.

“You’re mine,” Dax repeated, breathless and soul-blind. “My Nerys.”

“Yours.” Kira kissed her again, and Dax was sure she could taste her heart. “Yours, Jadzia.”


	38. Chapter 38

“Joran.”

The name cut through the tenderness of the moment, blurted out like an expletive before Dax even realised she’d been thinking about it. She wasn’t sure where it had come from, or what had possessed her to say it, only that it had come with a surge of courage that she could neither explain nor understand. She shifted on the bed, feeling suddenly uncomfortable and very exposed, but she should have known better than to think even for a moment that Kira would judge her for saying his name in a moment like this.

She was confused, and understandably so, but that was as far as her reaction went. Her gaze was steady and strong as she met Dax’s, and the soft compassion never left her features. “What about him?” she asked, very softly.

Dax didn’t resist as she slipped her hand down to squeeze her own. It was too late to back out now, she supposed, and sat up. “I was dreaming about him,” she admitted, feeling strangely ashamed of the fact. “And you, too, but that’s not important…”

“I’m not important?” Kira smiled, light-heartedly playful, and took her hand back. “I’m crushed.”

Dax tried to laugh, but it came out weak and discordant. She inched away a little and hugged her knees to her chest, rocking just as she had the previous night, but this time it was borne from contemplation rather than a need for self-protection.

“He took my symbiont,” she explained. “He ripped it out of my body and took it for himself, and left me to die.”

Though she clearly wanted to close the space Dax had put between them and pull her back into her arms, Kira refrained from actually doing so. She just sat there quietly, letting Dax take all the personal space she wanted and quietly letting her know that she was there if she was needed. “That sounds awful,” she said.

“It was,” Dax agreed.

Kira bit down on her lip, clearly fighting her empathic instincts. “What did you do?” she asked in a voice that made it clear she wouldn’t press this if Dax didn’t want to answer.

Dax raised her head, meeting Kira’s gaze with a tearful smile. “I forgave him.”

For a long moment, Kira was speechless. She didn’t seem to know what to say, or even if she should say anything at all. Dax was simultaneously relieved and discomfited by how readily she sensed the weight behind the confession, how deep it ran and how much it meant. It came so naturally to her to understand, and for the first time Dax realised what a blessing that truly was.

As she considered the best way to respond, Kira watched her, wordless and quiet from across the bed; flecks of pale sunlight danced across her features, lighting up her eyes and colouring her cheeks, and the sight of it stole Dax’s breath. She felt that she could happily do nothing for the rest of her life (well, this one, anyway) but sit in this bed and watch the light play across Kira’s face, watch the colours dance on her skin and blaze behind her eyes. _Nerys,_ she thought, and wondered if any other name could ever mean so much.

At long last, Kira found her voice. “That’s beautiful, Jadzia,” she whispered, eyes shining.

This time, when Dax smiled back at her, it came as easily as breathing. “So are you.”

Kira swatted her arm for the shameless flattery, allowing herself a moment to indulge the idea that she might mean it, then sobered. “You’re not,” she observed flatly. “In fact, you look terrible.”

Dax released her knees, sighing deeply as she settled back against the pillows. Bareil’s shirt felt tight and constricting around her chest, and the pressure made her heart feel like it was racing. Though she could tell by the morning light seeping through the window that she must have slept through the night, she was tired beyond words, and all the more so after allowing herself to think of her dream. Her whole body ached; her muscles were sore and strained, and her breath rattled painfully in lungs that felt seared, hitching as she tried to gulp down air through the collar of the shirt.

She recognised the feeling well; she’d seen it more times than she could count in others, the bone-deep exhaustion of someone recovering from a great ordeal, of post-traumatic stress that hadn’t quite settled in. She was annoyed, because it meant that Kira was right about her, that she really was recovering from something, that she really had been through as much suffering as she’d inflicted. Trills weren’t exactly the hardiest species in the galaxy, and joined Trills were even more susceptible to weakness than their unjoined brethren, with the symbiont absorbing so much of the body’s resources and leaving so few to feed the host when it needed them. Dax was safe and warm and protected inside her belly, but the young woman Jadzia had borne all of what the two of them had been through, and she was feeling the effects of it now, weather-beaten and worn out.

“I’m just a little tired,” she said, mustering a reassuring half-grin, then sighed when Kira’s frown deepened. “It’s been a long week.” She hesitated, realising that she didn’t know exactly how long it had been. “Or two. However long I was gone.”

“Barely a week,” Kira assured her, and somehow that helped. “If it really had been two, I would’ve gone over there myself and forced them to give you back.”

Dax chuckled, imagining it. “Benjam… I mean, Captain Sisko… when I agreed to go to Terok Nor, I made him promise to find you and tell you I was all right. I made him promise to tell you I was safe.”

Kira acknowledged with a grunt and a curt nod, though the look on her face made it clear that she didn’t approve of that any more now than she had at the time, and that she had no intention of thanking Dax for sending her a second-hand messenger on her behalf. And especially that particular messenger, complete with all the old memories he must have dredged up in her; Dax remembered all too well how furious Kira had been to see him again, and wondered what sort of welcome she’d given him when he showed up to announce that her friend wasn’t coming back yet. Old habits died hard, after all, and old grudges died even harder. Dax knew all about that, and she shivered down to her bones.

“He wasn’t exactly forthcoming with details,” Kira griped, then flashed her teeth, a predatory half-smile that looked like a leer. “But I dragged them out of him.”

“I’m sure he loved that…” Dax thought of the other Sisko, of his strained but affectionate relationship with Jadzia, of the ways they complemented each other and the ways they didn’t. She hoped that he was treating her well, and that she was doing the same to him. “He’s not as bad as you think he is.”

“Maybe not.” Kira shrugged, clearly not wanting to discuss this, or even think about it any more than she had to. “But if he hadn’t had a convenient change of heart at the last minute, Bashir and I would’ve died in that Prophets-forsaken place.” She shook her head, disgusted that Dax would even consider taking his side against hers. “I’m sure he was nothing but hospitable to you when you were there, but make no mistake: it was only because he needed something from you. If you’d been in the same situation Bashir and I were in, he would’ve fed you to the Intendant and not even bothered sticking around to see her spit out your bones.” Her expression hardened, not even softening when Dax flinched. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as… well, as far as Quark could throw him. And you shouldn’t either.”

Dax thought of Jadzia again, and rubbed her arms where Sisko had thrown her up against the wall, so angry that she’d overshadowed him in her favour, so protective of her easy heart. “I hope you’re wrong,” she said aloud, letting all of that quiet sorrow bleed through and touch her voice. “I really do.”

Apparently forgetting the importance of personal space, Kira leaned in and slung an arm across her shoulders. “Forget about him,” she urged. “And forget about her, too. Jadzia, or whatever you want to call her that you don’t want to call yourself. Forget about all of them.” Dax pulled back; Kira sighed, but let her go. “You’re home now, all right? You’re home, and you don’t ever have to go back to that nightmare place again. You’re home and you’re safe, and you’re here with me. Nothing else matters.”

Dax shifted uncomfortably. She wanted to believe that, she really did, but it was hard when it all still felt so close, so immediate. It was hard to push it away when she could still feel its taint on every inch of her, soiled and stained and burned deep. She grimaced, suddenly all too aware of the sweat and grime and dirt still sticking to her skin, clinging to her borrowed shirt and turning it dark and discoloured.

“I feel dirty,” she mumbled, before her common sense had a chance to catch up and silence her.

Kira leaned in again at that, welcoming the opportunity to close the meagre space between them once more. She pressed her face to the crook of Dax’s neck, inhaling the scent of her, of dirt and dried blood, of heat and discomfort. It felt deeply intimate, almost more so than lovemaking would have been, and Dax felt herself blush, tensing against the instinct to pull away from her, to shudder and stumble back. Kira breathed deeply, and she didn’t recoil even as she must have realised how dirty Dax was, how disgusting. Still she breathed her in, still she drank down the scent of her, the taste of her. Still, she did not pull away. Who was she, that she could endure such filth? Who was she, that she didn’t gag at the very sight of her?

“You’re just fine,” Kira told her, raising her head just enough to look at Dax and let her see the sincerity in her eyes; though Dax knew it wasn’t the truth, when Kira looked up at her like that she could almost let herself believe that it was. “But if you want to freshen up anyway, we have a shower you can use.”

“I know you do,” Dax said; her voice was thick, tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. Even her own words tasted of dirt and grime. “You keep telling me. I’m just not…”

She sighed; how could she put into words something she didn’t even really understand herself? How could she make Kira understand how unfathomably frightening it was to even think of being clean when she felt so filthy and tainted inside? How could she hope to make Kira understand what that felt like when she couldn’t even make sense of it herself?

“Jadzia?” Kira pressed, as gently as ever.

“I don’t know,” she finished with another frustrated sigh, hating how much it sounded like surrender. “I don’t know. I just… I feel so…”

“Dirty?” Kira suggested, and the tone of her voice made it clear that she was talking about something far deeper than the stains on her skin. Dax nodded, biting back a whimper, and Kira pressed a soothing hand to the small of her back. “You feel unclean. You feel tainted. You feel like it wouldn’t make a difference if you took a thousand showers because you’ll never be clean anyway.” She craned her neck, lips wet against Dax’s jaw, whispering empathy like closely guarded secrets. “And there’s probably some part of you that doesn’t even want to be clean, whether you can be or not. You want to wear the dirt like a badge, so anyone who sees you will know that you’re unclean, so they’ll know that you’re tainted.”

Dax choked on something dangerously close to a sob. It was so true. Every word of it, so true, and she hadn’t even known there were words to describe the feeling until they spilled from Kira’s lips and shaped themselves into cohesion and sense and truth. “Yes,” she forced out. “That, exactly. How did you know?”

“How do you think?” Kira asked, intense but still carrying that note of tenderness that sang in sync with Dax’s heart.

Dax hung her head, deeply ashamed of herself for even having asked. “Is there anything you don’t know?” she asked. “Is there anything you don’t understand? Is there anything you can’t put into words so much better than I can? I’ve lived eight lifetimes, Nerys, but your experience makes me feel like a stupid child.”

“You’re not stupid,” Kira said. “But eight lifetimes of simplicity is still just a lot of simplicity. And if there’s one thing I can say about my one little life, it’s that it was never simple.”

“We’re so different,” Dax murmured, trying to take her mind off the sweat and grime coating her skin, the way it itched and the way it felt. “I’ve seen so much. I’ve seen half the galaxy. I’ve seen the birth and death of stars. I’ve seen things you can’t even imagine. I’ve seen so much, but you know so much more than I can even dream of.”

Kira pulled her in close. “I do know,” she murmured, kissing a path up past her jawline, over her cheek, up to her temple. “I know, and I understand.”

“I wish I did,” Dax said. “I wish I understood as well as you do. I wish I could understand anything. I don’t even understand myself any more. I…”

Kira sighed. “I know,” she said again, like she could drill her understanding into Dax’s brain by repeating it over and over again. “But Jadzia, you have to believe me when I tell you that you’re not tainted or unclean. You’re not any of those things.”

She pulled back, just a little, and suddenly Dax couldn’t see anything but her eyes, her beautiful Bajoran eyes and the fire in them reflected like the memory of last night’s sunset. She was so beautiful, so radiant and so reverent, and for a moment Dax could almost forget that she was lying, that she couldn’t make her clean or free just by telling her she was. She could bathe in the warmth of her, the sunset-soft firelight, the honesty and understanding, all those things that were so much easier felt than said. She could close her eyes and almost forget that someone else’s shirt was sticking to her skin.

“I’m all of those things,” she argued, clawing her way back to herself, turning away from the fire in Kira’s eyes and turning inwards. “I’m tainted and I’m unclean and I’m…”

“Jadzia.” Kira pulled the shirt up and over her head, tossing it aside and pressing delicate kisses to the soiled ridges of her collarbones. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Do you hear me? There’s nothing wrong with you.” Dax had stiffened at the contact, and Kira sighed. “Jadzia. I know dirt. I’ve lived in it for most of my life. There’s nothing on you that can’t be washed away.”

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? “I’m not sure I want to wash it away,” she confessed, feeling small and stupid.

Kira smiled against her skin. “Why not?” she asked, with all the soft-spoken sympathy of someone who knew, someone who understood. “Jadzia, a little hot water won’t make you forget who you are or where you’ve been.”

“I feel like it will,” Dax said sadly. “I feel like, if I wash it all away, there’ll be nothing left underneath.”

“There’ll be everything left,” Kira said, with such passion that her voice trembled, lost as it was to Dax’s skin. “ _You_ will be left.”

It was only as she said it that Dax realised the idea was almost more frightening than nothing at all. She pulled away, searching Kira’s face, and when she spoke it was in a fearful whisper. “What if I’m not enough?”

“You are,” Kira said, smiling with such depthless faith that Dax couldn’t bear to look at it. “You’re more than enough, Jadzia. Trust me.”

Because she was Kira, because she was Nerys, Dax allowed herself to do that. She did trust her. She trusted that she knew, trusted that she understood, trusted who she was and what she felt, trusted what she had been through, and trusted her to see what Dax had been through as well, not through the cracked and tinted lens of her own refracted hindsight, but through the smooth clean window-pane of experience, of knowing and understanding.

More than anyone else Dax had ever met, Kira knew what it was to feel unclean. She knew how it felt to hide behind the dirt and the stain and the grime, the dried blood and the mottled bruises, the markings that ran so much deeper than the skin they covered, that were so much more uncomfortable than the itching of half-healed wounds. She knew how it felt to see those things as markers and identifiers, the only pieces of herself that she could define any more. She knew how it felt to draw a sick and strange kind of comfort from it, to see the dirt inside reflected by the dirt outside, the stain on her soul radiating out until it stained her body too, until she couldn’t escape it, until nobody could. Kira knew exactly what self-loathing tasted like, and she knew what it looked like smeared and daubed in angry colours across a body that had once been so clean and pure. She knew it all.

Dax stood up. Her legs were unsteady, but they held her weight well enough, and she locked her knees as she waited for them to stop shaking. Kira watched her as she swayed, but made no move to try and help; Dax had no doubt that she would be by her side in less than a heartbeat if she needed her, but she seemed to know better than to impose her assistance until Dax asked for it. She appreciated that, the chance to at least try and prove herself before she stumbled and fell, the opportunity to collapse by herself before falling into someone else’s arms. She was thankful, if only because it would allow to fail completely, beyond all shadow of doubt, to cast Kira’s faith into the fire and force her to see the truth of it, all the damage she had done and all the pain it had left her in. She would remind them both of who she was, how far she had fallen and why.

“Jadzia.” A sigh cut through the air, but Dax wasn’t sure who it came from. “If you need me to… that is, if you need some…”

“I don’t,” Dax snapped, aggressive, though not nearly as much as she wanted to be. “I don’t need your help to take a shower, Kira. I can do that much by myself.”

Kira held up a hand, defensive, and narrowed her eyes. “All right,” she said softly, though Dax could tell it was difficult for her to push back her militant Bajoran instincts and keep her tone low. “I was just offering.”

“I know.” Dax grimaced, hating herself all over again. “I’m sorry.” She felt like she had apologised a thousand times and still not made the least impact; no apology could smooth over what she’d done, but she said it again anyway. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just…”

“…hate feeling so helpless?” Kira offered kindly. “I know. I hated it too.”

She grimaced too, but the expression was so different in her than it was in Dax; the huffing breath came out smoother and less effortful, like she was breathing her troubles out instead of struggling to breathe around them. Dax knew that it was only because she’d lived with these things for so much longer, because she’d had the time to heal from them, that she had the luxury now of a safe and peaceful distance to look back on what she’d been through; she knew all of that, but it still made her feel weak and ineffectual to realise that she wasn’t there herself yet. She should be better, she thought, and could only have faith that one day she would be.

Looking at Kira when she sighed like that was like fumbling in the dark for a weapon, not sure whether her fingers would meet handle or blade. She was a constant reminder of all the things Dax was not, but also a reminder of what she might yet become, if she was strong enough. And she would be. She had to be. If Kira, who had been through so much worse for so much longer, could look at her now with patience and understanding, compassion and love alight in her eyes where there had once been nothing but mistrust and hate… if she could do that, after everything she and her people had endured for all their loves, then Dax could sure as hell do it after a few days in another universe.

“You’re so patient…” she heard herself say. “You’re so…”

“Go,” Kira said, but there was no authority in the instruction and her eyes were earnest and sparkling. “Go and take a shower. Go and wash yourself clean.”

Dax sighed. Even now, she couldn’t deny Nerys anything.

The house wasn’t especially big, even by meagre Bajoran standards, but the bathroom was inconveniently located, and Dax found herself wandering the corridors for a long time, alone and and confused and feeling utterly wretched, before she finally stumbled upon the right door. She had always rather prided herself on her sense of direction, on being able to find things quickly and efficiently, but the Bajorans seemed to take a sordid amount of joy in making things inaccessible and utterly infuriating to alien species. Dax supposed she could understand that impulse after so long under the heels of the Cardassians, but it didn’t do much to improve her mood, and by the time she’d navigated the archaic controls and stepped under the unfamiliar stream of hot water, she was feeling even more frustrated and miserable than she had before.

Hot-water showers were something of a primitive novelty, so far as Dax was concerned, and it had been an exceptionally long time since she’d had that experience. It didn’t surprise in the least her that the Bajorans would be set in their ways, in this as much as anything else, stubbornly insisting on sticking to their old and archaic methods of hygiene as with everything else. Oh, she wasn’t foolish enough to say so in front of Kira; Bareil might see the funny side, but Kira would shoot her down before she said so much as a syllable against her precious Bajor. Still, it was quaint, if somewhat unsurprising.

What did surprise her, however, was how different it was to the clinical sonic showers she was so long accustomed to. There was none of that streamlined simplicity here, just warmth and water cascading down on her from above. It felt a little like being caught in a torrential storm, or like taking a stroll in the middle of the night on Ferenginar, damp and warm and inefficient, a sensory experience so much more than a way of getting clean, and for a long moment she was overwhelmed by the strangeness of it.

Emony, she remembered, used to enjoy hot-water showers. She would talk at length to anyone who would listen about how relaxing she found them, how they helped her to unwind and soothe her muscles after hours-long workouts, how they left her energised and refreshed, calming far more than cleaning. She had insisted time and time again that they were more effective than any massage at getting the kinks out after a long day, though none of Dax’s other hosts had agreed with her. Curzon, in particular, had been extremely vocal in his loathing for ‘that damn gymnast and her nostalgia for all that old-fashioned nonsense’. Jadzia herself hadn’t given the subject much thought at all until now; she hadn’t imagined she would ever have a need to think about it, much less actually experience this side of the debate for herself, and had been happy to simply file it away in her head under Pointless Little Things That Dax Hosts Won’t Ever Agree On.

Experiencing it now, she still wasn’t sure. The pressure was painful, and all the more so with her body as sore as it was. The water drummed down in staccato drumbeats against the bruises on her skin, turning them even darker, and the pools that gathered at her feet in the moments before they swirled and drained away were almost black with grime and dirt. It was all too visceral, too visible, at least right now. Maybe on another day, she might have appreciated the luxuriance of the experience, but right now she felt awkward, more aware than usual of her nakedness and very conscious of the pounding of water on her aching body. She was already on edge, discomfited and unhappy with the idea of being made clean in the first place, and the whole thing just felt like she was under assault, barraged by the high-pressure stream of water and uncomfortable with how long it took; she felt exposed, too, like there was an unseen audience all around her, throwing rocks and abuse.

It hurt. More than anything else, that was the sensation that stuck. Bruises being battered afresh, old blood washed away by new as half-healed wounds reopened. Her body was already beaten and brutalised, branded by the Intendant’s touch, by her own, and by Jadzia’s. Her abdomen still ached, sore and tender, and she remembered once again the scream of agony as the phantasmal Joran ripped the symbiont out of her. She looked down to reassure herself that it was still there, and saw tangible proof of the pain that still plagued her, a swell of colourful bruises sprawling out from the place where the hallucinating Jadzia had punched her. She touched the spot with tentative fingertips, tracing the chaotic patterns where they ballooned over pale skin, and tried to reconcile the reality with the dream.

A sob caught in her throat. Was that what Jadzia had to look forward to? If the hallucinations ever did subside, would they just be replaced by dreams instead, like Dax’s had? Would that be any comfort to her? Would she survive them without Dax there to hold her hand and tell her that she understood? She thought about Kira, the depth of her understanding and the depth of her faith, and wondered if Jadzia had any chance at all of surviving in a world without them? She felt wretched all over again as she thought of it, trying to block out the look on her face when she left, the horror in her eyes as it slowly sank in that the only one who could save her now was herself. Had she done enough? Could she have done more?

“I’m sorry,” she told the empty room, imagining stone walls smeared with blood. “I’m so sorry.”

She fumbled with the shower controls, half-blind and half-mad, and turned the pressure up even higher, as high as it would go, until the pain was unbearable when the heavy water lashed her sensitised skin. The dried blood and dirt had long since drained away now, and the pools at her feet were clear and clean with nothing left to wash away. Her skin was reddening under the pressure and the heat, at least in the places where it wasn’t blue and purple and grey, and there wasn’t a single place on her body that didn’t hurt like hell. Hell, that place where she’d come from, the place she’d never see again. And still, even as it hurt like that awful place, still she stood under the pouring water, closing her eyes to keep the spray from stinging them too and feeling the kick-drum rhythm against her body, a mournful song steeped as much in anger as in pain, as much a testament to what she’d been through as to what she had done.

“I’m sorry,” she said, again and again and again, water spilling into her mouth until she had no choice but to swallow it down lest it choke her. _Drink or die,_ a memory whispered, and she sobbed. “I’m sorry.”

And she was. Sorry to Keiko, sorry to Jadzia, even sorry to Garak. She was sorry to Nerys for carrying her struggles, to Bareil for not understanding them, even to the Intendant for being so twisted. Last of all, she was sorry to Joran. Sorry, even now, to the tortured and torturous creature inside her, to the monster in her head and the serrated knife-edge that gouged her palm. Even to him, she was sorry, because she could not allow him to shape her into the thing he wanted.

She scrubbed at her skin until it was raw, until the half-healed slashes rose up in new welts and abrasions, fresh shades of red to offset the blues and greys of the bruises, until those too were swollen with renewed suffering, until the water ran dark again and the pools at her feet turned bloody once more. Sensation, she thought, and remembered Emony. She wanted this, she realised. She wanted the sensation, even if it was only more pain. She wanted to replace those old injuries, the shadows of that place, all the bruises and the cuts and the brands marking out her place in a universe that was not her home, the scars and the scratches, the Intendant’s seduction and Jadzia’s struggles. She wanted to replace all of those terrible things with self-inflicted wounds, with a pain that was her own, an echo of all the things she’d caused. If she was to be bruised and bloodied and brutalised, then she wanted it to be by her own hand.

It wasn’t punishment this time, and it wasn’t self-control. It wasn’t even justice, not really. It was nothing like the slick wet slide of a borrowed blade across her palm, or the bruises splattered across raw knuckles after punching the wall until it broke her. It was none of those things. She didn’t need the pain to keep her strong this time, didn’t need it to ground her or sober her or silence the war-drum of violence and rage. This wasn’t for Joran’s sake, or the Intendant’s, or Jadzia’s. It was for herself. It was for Dax. This body was hers, and if it had to hurt, then she would be the one to make it hurt. She would take the pain back, claim it for her own, pave over the damage caused by that place, wipe out the blight of good intentions gone horribly wrong; she would take back what was hers, reclaim her body and her pain, make it all her own and let it heal in the sanctuary of this place, this house, this Bajor. She would make herself clean, just as Kira had told her to. She would brand herself with fresh wounds, and when they faded at last to leave behind pale and perfect skin, she would know that it was hers.

After a while, the water turned cold, striking the fresh abrasions with renewed force. She smiled at the sensation, dimly remembering childhood winters. It was a strange memory, striking and confusing in the haze of everything else she was remembering just then, but it struck just as the water did, and she was as helpless to the smile that lifted her lips as she had been to the tremors that had wracked her limbs a moment earlier.

Winter. Most of Trill turned to ice and snow, everything frozen and beautiful, frosty flowers and dazzling white skies, the sting of wind and sleet striking her in the face, her sister’s laughter as she told her to wear more layers next time. Jadzia had always loved the cold as a child, and Dax loved it again now, the water striking her skin just like the bite of icy winds and powder snow, turning the heat-reddened skin pale once more, leaving the blood and bruises a patchwork of colour over a bone-white desert.

When she finally shut off the water, more than an hour after turning it on, she was shivering. Her body was frozen through, but it felt good. It felt comfortable, like snowflakes and the innocence of childhood. It felt like Trill, like a place that used to be home.

She didn’t even think to grab a towel, to dry herself or cover her modesty. In fact, she was wholly oblivious to the fact that she was naked at all as she stumbled back to her borrowed bedroom, not even thinking to be thankful that she didn’t run into anyone, and it wasn’t until she shut the door behind her and collapsed back against it that she realised it wasn’t just the cold making her shiver. Her body felt like a plasma conduit, alight with energy but shaking under the strain of holding itself upright, of holding itself together, an endless shuddering maelstrom of adrenaline and agony.

The bedroom was empty, she realised belatedly as she looked around through streaming eyes. She supposed that Kira had disappeared to start her day, that she was getting dressed or making breakfast, or entertaining herself with whatever morning routines she and Bareil had set up for themselves before Dax had materialised on their bedroom floor and ruined it for them.

She felt very selfish as she thought about that, like some kind of stray animal or a newborn baby left unceremoniously at their doorstep, making them feel obligated to take care of her. Suddenly she wanted to run away, to vanish, even to go back to that awful other universe if that was the only place that would have her, to do anything that would let Kira and Bareil get back into their routine. She had ruined their time together, ruined Kira’s perfect pilgrimage. She had ruined everything. They were supposed to be eating their breakfast or sleeping or praying. They were supposed to be Bajorans, not babysitters. They were supposed to be free, and Dax wanted nothing more just then than to leave them alone with their freedom.

Her legs gave way under her, and she slumped to the floor, leaning back against the door and hugging her knees to her chest; her breath hitched and stuttered in her throat, half-choking with the memory of hot water and near-violent pressure, but she didn’t cry. She wasn’t sure she had enough strength left in her to cry, even if she could have thought of something worth crying about. But what was there, really? What did she have that was worth crying over? She was just a self-involved Trill with delusions of grandeur, imagining that her pain was so much more important than those around her, when they were the ones who knew what pain truly was. Dax had shed enough tears for herself already, and she would shed no more.

She felt ashamed of herself, ashamed of the tears she refused to shed, ashamed of herself for wanting the relief they would bring. Kira was right: the other universe was far away now. She was safe, and she was home, and even the bad things were fading away, seeping wounds slowly running clear, spreading as they paled to scars. They would always be there, she knew, but it was getting harder for her to cling to them; they were elusive now, always slipping out of reach, pain and guilt and horror constantly finding themselves replaced by words of compassion and understanding, promises whispered in a voice so much like Kira’s.

It was hard to cry for her own pain when it was healing, and it was hard to cry for her mistakes when just the thought of them brought back Kira’s chilling confession. _“Do you know how many nights I spent during the occupation, lying awake and torturing myself over my kills for that day?”_ Kira would have given anything to know that someone else had pulled the trigger, that someone else had done the deed. Who was Jadzia Dax to cry over the life that had been lost by her mistake when Kira Nerys had to live every day with so many taken by her own hand?

_Remember, and regret… but don’t apologise._

And so, Dax didn’t. She didn’t apologise, and she did not cry. She sat there, resting her chin on her knees, hugging her legs and squeezing them tight against the symbiont inside her. She sat there, gazing across the room at the full-length window, watching the glimmers of daylight as they pierced the seamless glass and listening to the soft ripples of birdsong on flower-scented air. She sat there, quiet and alone, remembering and regretting.

Bajor really was beautiful, she thought watching through the window as the sun climbed the sky. No wonder the Bajorans had so much faith in their Prophets. No wonder their lives were so simple, so peaceful even after so much tragedy and pain. If she lived on a world like this, maybe she would have faith too.

It was useless thinking about such things, of course, but the idea made a welcome change from the other thoughts clamouring about inside her. It reminded her that she could still feel good, that she could still think of peace and tranquillity, that she could still believe in faith. It reminded her that there was still enough of a heart left in her empty chest to feel a flood of warmth and love as she stared out at an alien world. It reminded her that there was more inside of her than pleasure and pain, that she was capable of feeling more than anger or hate, that maybe one day she would have more to offer than destruction. It reminded her that there was more to who she was than who she had been.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but she was still sitting there, cold and naked and trembling, when Kira came back. Dax didn’t respond to the knock or the sound of her name, but she braced her back to hold herself upright when the door fell away behind it, swinging open and leaving her unsupported. She almost fell anyway, but if Kira noticed how precariously she was balanced, she chose not to mention it. She didn’t say anything at all, in fact, simply sat down silently by her side, stretching her legs out in front of her, and followed her gaze to the window.

It was another mark of how deeply she understood, Dax supposed, that she didn’t try to push her presence on her. She didn’t announce herself, didn’t explain why she was here, didn’t ask Dax if she was all right or point out her nakedness, or say anything at all. She just sat there by her side, watching the planet she called home and basking in the sparkle of sunlight. It was more comforting than all the sweet words of a hundred universes that she was content to sit there and wait for as long as it took Dax to invite her in, to acknowledge that she was there, to speak or just to give Kira permission to speak in her place. She was patient, so much more than that angry young woman who had first arrived on Deep Space Nine. Bareil’s calming influence, and perhaps a little of Dax’s own, had made an impression on her, it seemed, and Dax was happy for the inner peace it seemed to have brought her.

“Nerys,” she murmured after a long silence.

The word was barely more than an exhalation, but it was enough. Kira saw the invitation, and she took it. “Dax,” she said softly, and Dax could hear the smile behind her name. “How are you feeling?”

There were a thousand answers to that, but Dax could only think of one in that moment. “Small.”

Kira chuckled, shifting to brush her hand then quickly pulling away. “Any cleaner?” she asked.

Dax shook her head, but she thought long and hard about the question before she said anything out loud. In truth, she didn’t feel clean at all, but she didn’t exactly feel dirtier either. She’d expected to feel worse, to feel raw and debased, like a festering wound cut open, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel clean and she certainly didn’t feel healed, but she didn’t feel dirty either. She just felt sore and small, and very strange.

“I don’t know,” she said at last, almost apologetic. “I’m not sure what I’m feeling.”

“That’s all right,” Kira said, quietly reassuring, and closed the space once more to squeeze her hand.

Dax tore her gaze away from the window to look at her. She could feel the fear sparking behind her eyes, inexplicable and unexplained, but she couldn’t bring herself to try and hide it. She knew that Kira would see it, that she would realise Dax was afraid of her, afraid of being seen, of being understood, of being exposed and open and known. She wasn’t afraid of Kira’s presence, but she was afraid of the thing she saw when she looked at her, afraid of being that dark and twisted creature she saw in herself, and just as afraid of being something softer, something less guilty. She was afraid of herself, and she was more afraid of seeing herself through Kira’s eyes than she was of anything else in any universe.

Suddenly, she was acutely aware of her own nakedness. She felt exposed, she realised, because she really was exposed. Kira was dressed lightly, a modest summer dress in the Bajoran style, but she was still dressed. Dax didn’t even have a towel to cover the stains on her skin.

Reacting by reflex, she tried to cover herself. Not her exposed limbs or her breasts or her ribs, but the fresh marks left on her by the shower, her own brand by her own hand, the points of contact that would heal and burn away and leave her reborn beneath, the wounds that she’d reopened and the parts of herself that she’d reclaimed. She wanted to hide them, wanted to shield Kira from having to see them, from having to understand them, but she didn’t have a chance. Before she could even move, Kira was there, pulling her hands away, taking them both in her own and holding them, loose and soft and so tender that it ached.

“You’re shivering,” she said in that gentle tone that came so unexpectedly easily to her when it was most needed.

She squeezed her hands again, and Dax realised with a kind of dissociated shock that she actually didn’t mind the tenderness this time. She could almost enjoy the light pressure of her fingertips, the sweet cadence of her voice, the softness and the sympathy. All those things that had so disturbed her, all those things she’d fought against and resisted, all those things she was so sure she didn’t deserve… all of a sudden, she found herself basking in them.

She still felt open and raw, unnatural inside herself and touched by the violence inside; it was still there, and it probably always would be, but for the first time, it felt like it was resting. She didn’t need Kira to feed it, not any more. She didn’t need to be flagellated, to be broken and shattered, to have her guilt made manifest in something she could feel. She didn’t need Kira to shout at her, didn’t need her to wield words like weapons, to use her fists like a borrowed blade. She didn’t want her to punish her any more, and she didn’t want her to hate her. She could still feel the hum of blood in her veins, anger still simmering as it always would, but it wasn’t alone any more. She could still feel the rage and the hate, but they were no longer the only things she knew how to feel. Suddenly, for the first time, she could accept Kira’s kindness without wishing it would hurt.

“I’m all right,” she said.

It was such a simple statement, and it didn’t really have anything to do with what she was feeling, and yet she found herself awestruck by how true it was, how honest in spite of the tremors and the weakness, the pain that showed she still was not healed and the fading marks that showed she would be; for all of that, she really was all right. She was all right.

Kira was studying her, a frown crinkling her nose ridges. “You must be freezing.”

Dax shrugged. “Trills like the cold.”

“Of course they do,” Kira muttered, rolling her eyes. “They like everything that any sane species would hate.”

Still, though, she didn’t try to talk Dax into standing, or putting on clothes, or moving at all. She seemed content to accept that explanation as the truth, content to bask in Dax’s quiet just as Dax basked in her kindness. Though Dax was sure she must be uncomfortable sitting on the floor like this, she didn’t say so, letting Dax set the pace and sit there for as long as she wanted or needed. Dax was grateful, and she let it show with a fleeting smile.

After another brief silence, warm and filled with affection, Kira stretched and yawned. “I had your bag beamed down from the runabout,” she said, sounding contemplative.

“That was thoughtful of you,” Dax said, frowning at the clumsy segue.

“I thought…” She fumbled the words, cursed, then tried again. “Look, I’m not sure what it’s like for you, but I know that I always felt a little better when I was surrounded by familiar things. Clothes, toys, things that had good memories, things that smelled of home… things that I could instantly recognise as comforting.” She smiled, and Dax was woefully aware of how personal this was for her, how deeply this moment was cutting into her own history. “I thought the same might be true for you, so I had your things beamed down. Having something that’s yours, something familiar and comforting… it might help you to feel a little more like yourself.”

Dax mustered a wry chuckle. “I don’t need that,” she said, and felt her chest flood with fresh warmth. “I have you. You make me feel more like myself than anything else could.”

Kira blinked, caught between confusion and awe. “Do I?” she asked, and her fingers trembled just a little as well where they still held Dax’s.

“You do.” Dax nodded, feeling her muscles go tight. “I look at you, Nerys, and I see who you were. I see the militant ex-terrorist who couldn’t let go of the past and who couldn’t look to the future because the wounds were still so raw, because everything was still so immediate. I see the proud and angry Bajoran who didn’t want anything to do with me because I was Starfleet. I see the traumatised young woman who slowly but surely learned how to exist in a world that was new and strange and frightening, who learned to let go of hate and pain and become something new. I see all the old things you’ve told me about yourself and all the new things you’ve become since I met you.”

Tears shimmered in Kira’s eyes, catching the sunlight. “Jadzia…”

Dax drank down the sight of her, then closed her eyes and wrapped the memory of it around her heart. “I see the first time we got through an entire dinner together without you storming out. I see the first time you let yourself smile in front of me. I see the first time you let me hear you laugh. I see the first time you shared something about your past, and the first time you let yourself hope for a future. I see _you_ , Nerys, and…”

When she opened her eyes again, the tears in Kira’s eyes had started to fall. She didn’t check them, just let them trace skittering their lines down the side of her face, salt-wet paths staining her cheeks as potent and as poignant as the welts and bruises that stained Dax’s skin. “Jadzia.”

“I see you…” Dax took a tremulous breath. “…and I see me, too.” The confession came hard to them both, but once it was out there, it sounded like freedom. “I see the person you see, Nerys. Not just Jadzia, and not just Dax. I see _me_. When I look at you, I see myself as you see me. And I… I know who I am.”

They stood in almost perfect unison, Dax shivering in the cold and Kira trembling with emotion, with the weight of Dax’s faith in her, of her own faith in Dax, of all the faith they had both kept alive for so long. It came so naturally to her, the faith and the tremors, and she looked so beautiful as she leaned in to press against Dax’s body, lean and limber, all of her. Faith, made manifest in the press of skin on skin, made manifest in them, and though she was shivering and naked, exposed and vulnerable, though she was so weak she could barely stand, somehow Dax had never felt so strong.

“Jadzia,” Kira whispered again, as though that were the only thing she could say. Then again, “ _Jadzia_ ,” breathless and struck dumb, and Dax wanted to ask her to say it again, to wonder at the strangeness of hearing her name and not think of the other Jadzia, the one that was damned and damaged, or Sisko or Garak or the Intendant or Keiko, or anyone at all.

 _Jadzia_. She wanted to beg Kira to keep saying it, to say it over and over again until it was the only word either of them knew. She wanted to hear it, to wrap it around her like a towel, like a tourniquet for those wounds that were hers too. That name that she had hated so deeply… suddenly, it was the only thing she wanted. She wanted Kira to say it until she drowned, until she lost herself in the sound of her name, the name she’d thought she might have lost forever, a name she’d thought would be tainted and twisted for the rest of her life, a name she’d thought that place had taken away from her, stolen along with her identity.

But it wasn’t stolen and it wasn’t twisted. It wasn’t tainted, and neither was she. She heard that name now, _Jadzia_ , like a prayer and a promise and a plea, like the sweetest supplication and the holiest place of worship. She heard it echoing inside her head and off the walls and in the breath between their bodies, the name trembling like faith on Kira’s lips, resonating inside of her and connecting with the places she’d thought were broken, the places that Joran couldn’t touch, the places that not even Curzon could. That place was hers, Jadzia’s and nobody else’s, a shard of empty space waiting to be filled with things that had not happened yet, a private and personal place, a niche in the ever-expanding universe that was Dax, a piece of history reserved just for her. Her place, hers alone. _Jadzia_.

“Look.”

Dax blinked, and realised that Kira had guided her to the other side of the room, that they were standing in front of the mirror, and for a moment she was blinded by the sight of her own reflection.

“I…” she stammered.

Kira’s smile left her breathless, a perfect reflection of a perfect soul as she stepped back. “Look,” she said again. “See yourself.”

And she did. She looked, and she saw.

She saw bruises and blood, slashes and swelling. She saw skittering little crosshatched scratches and deep searing wounds, angry pink blisters and pulsing red cuts, blue and purple bruises curved to shadow the bones hidden beneath. She saw more colours than she could count, bright and garish and clashing, painful to the eye. She saw so many colours, so many wounds, so many things that would fade and dissolve, but casting all the rest into darkness was just one. A long thin line of dazzling white, old and healed long ago. It was barely visible through the mosaic of pain, but she saw it as clearly as if it was the only mark she’d ever worn. 

She saw so many wounds, so much damage, so much violence painting its path of destruction across the canvas of her skin. There was so much of everything, she couldn’t possibly remember where it had all come from. Was that bruise on her hip from Jadzia or the Intendant? Had she inflicted those cuts herself, or were they someone else’s work? Whose fist had made that mark? Whose nails had raised those welts? Who had held the blade when it scored those lines? So much damage, so many brands blurring her skin and turning it so many different colours. How could she possibly hope to know where it had all come from?

But that thin white line… that, she knew.

Jadzia, marked forever by Dax. She’d kept the scar so she could see. She’d kept it so she would remember.

Kira stood behind her, close but unobtrusive, fingers twined around Dax’s. Dax let the contact give her strength, pulling Kira’s arms around to circle her middle and bringing their joined hands down to that pale and precious line, two sets of fingertips tracing along the old familiar path. It was just like Kira, unobtrusive but beautiful, a thread of peace standing out stark and bold against a tapestry of chaos, and Dax marvelled at how perfect it was, the chaos etched onto her body echoing in perfect harmony with the chaos that had been in her head for so long. She had all but forgotten what peace sounded like, but now… now, looking down at that thin white line, looking up into that mirror, looking behind her at Nerys… now, at last, she remembered what it looked like.

 _Peace_. It shone from the mirror, reflected and amplified and impossible. It smiled like Jadzia, but it looked like Dax.

Somewhere out there in a far-distant universe, another version of herself was waging another internal war. She was fighting not just Joran but her own memories too, and Dax had no idea if she would ever be able to make peace with everything she was and everything she’d been. That Jadzia had her own struggles to fight, and hers was not the face that looked back from behind the glass. She was far away, long gone, and neither of them could reach the other now.

Joran had left his mark on the symbiont, but he was gone now too. His memories still remained, haunting and restless inside of her, but that was all they were. Memories, like all the others, and they had their own place in the past, just like he did.

Curzon still laughed and drank and sang inside her, guiding and encouraging; he talked to her about honour and taught her how to be better. He was a bad influence and a good mentor, and his memories were as close as any of her own. But he was dead too, and the Dax who sat with Benjamin Sisko and played chess over a mug of Klingon bloodwine or a bottle of Saurian brandy was not the same as the old man who had been his mentor.

Lela, Tobin, Emony, Audrid, Torias… they were all inside her as well. Their voices rang out with Curzon’s and whispered with Joran’s, shading her personality with brush-strokes of their own, sculpting her into something that was none of them and all of them. Dead, all of them, but they lived on in Dax.

She was all of them, and she was none of them.

She didn’t know who else she might have been, or what she might yet become. She didn’t know how many other Daxes were out there, in this universe or any other. She didn’t know who she might be in her next lifetime, or next year, or even tomorrow. She didn’t know who she would be, who she could be, or who she might be. But at long last, at least for the moment, she knew who she was.

She was home. She was whole.

She was Jadzia Dax.


End file.
